llow me aright?

And this is the wisdom of our Northmen who have well tamed Dame Fortune
and have set their sure brand upon her.

But, if money sticks not in their purses, and if they haggle not over
coins, yet are these men businessful with a purpose for large
enterprise. In these latitudes, we have deep-counselled companies of
traders who, while they love the sweet power of money, have ever
bartered fairly, and know that 'mine' and 'thine' are different words
which rhyme well in all reckonings. I have sure grounds for knowing
this, and am minded to say, "Hail! and all hail!"

The North is a numbed and haggard land of and snow, say many voices.
In its vast voids lives a dark spirit which lures men on and tricks
them so that they come, in time, to love that which punishes them. And
if by some fair hap they are led into other and softer climes, then do
they fret and fever for the wolf-lands of the Yukon or the Mackenzie,
as though some secret and unforbidden magic had entered their blood
forever.

I will not speak contrariwise to these men, for it is meet that I
should speak fairly. The love of the North, like the fiery kiss of
genius, is a sorrowful gift, and none can say whether it is greater in
joy or pain. She is an exacting mistress, this white-bodied,
rude-muscled North, and, of times, she breaks and hurts a man till he
drags his brokenness away to die. Yet, is she beautiful and
passionately human; full of vigour and drunken with life, and her house
stretches from the dawn to dayfall.

And why should men complain of the stabbing cold and of the
unrestricted range of the young winds? Why do they wish to regulate
God's snow and rain? What could be more hateful to men than
unfaltering sunshine and ever-flowering fields?

In the winter of the fortressed North, animals turn white as do the
birds and the very earth itself. All were pallid and colourless but
for the yellow belt of the setting sun and the black-green tree shadows
that fall toward the pole. The rivers cease their singing; the birds
are silent, and all is stilled to the bounds of the world save only the
sonorous wind which is the breath of Claeg, the Bound One, who is the
earth. Here, the north-east wind is Lord Paramount, and the Crees and
Chipewyans have long known that Death comes from his direction.

Listen! I made an error, to say that all is stilled, for, of occasion,
there is the mewl of the lynx; the yap of the timber wolf as he g