At the Back of the North Wind

I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable." (Location 850)

I shall only want one arm to take care of you; the other will be quite enough to sink the ship." "Oh, dear North Wind! how can you talk so?" "My dear boy, I never talk; I always mean what I say." "Then you do mean to sink the ship with the other hand?" "Yes." "It's not like you." "How do you know that?" "Quite easily. Here you are taking care of a poor little boy with one arm, and there you are sinking a ship with the other. It can't be like you." "Ah! but which is me? I can't be two mes, you know." "No. Nobody can be two mes." "Well, which me is me?" "Now I must think. There looks to be two." "Yes. That's the very point.—You can't be knowing the thing you don't know, can you?" "No." "Which me do you know?" "The kindest, goodest, best me in the world," answered Diamond, clinging to North Wind. "Why am I good to you?" "I don't know." "Have you ever done anything for me?" "No." "Then I must be good to you because I choose to be good to you." "Yes." "Why should I choose?" "Because—because—because you like." "Why should I like to be good to you?" "I don't know, except it be because it's good to be good to me." "That's just it; I am good to you because I like to be good." "Then why shouldn't you be good to other people as well as to me?" "That's just what I don't know. Why shouldn't I?" "I don't know either. Then why shouldn't you?" "Because I am." "There it is again," said Diamond. "I don't see that you are. It looks quite the other thing." "Well, but listen to me, Diamond. You know the one me, you say, and that is good." "Yes." "Do you know the other me as well?" "No. I can't. I shouldn't like to." "There it is. You don't know the other me. You are sure of one of them?" "Yes." "And you are sure there can't be two mes?" "Yes." "Then the me you don't know must be the same as the me you do know,—else there would be two mes?" "Yes." "Then the other me you don't know must be as kind as the me you do know?" "Yes." "Besides, I tell you that it is so, only it doesn't look like it. That I confess freely. Have you anything more to object?" "No, no, dear North Wind; I am quite satisfied." (Location 852)

And a beginning is the greatest thing of all. To try to be brave is to be brave. The coward who tries to be brave is before the man who is brave because he is made so, and never had to try." (Location 1005)

"I am only just. All kindness is but justice. We owe it." (Location 1008)

Dear little man! you will be very glad some day to be nobody yourself. (Location 1236)

It is not good at all—mind that, Diamond—to do everything for those you love, and not give them a share in the doing. It's not kind. It's making too much of yourself, my child. (Location 1261)

a strange pleasure filled his heart. The straining of the masts, the creaking of the boom, the singing of the ropes, the banging of the blocks as they put the vessel about, all fell in with the roaring of the wind above, the surge of the waves past her sides, and the thud with which every now and then one would strike her; while through it all Diamond could hear the gurgling, rippling, talking flow of the water against her planks, as she slipped through it, lying now on this side, now on that—like a subdued air running through the grand music his North Wind was making about him to keep him from tiring as they sped on towards the country at the back of her doorstep. (Location 1290)

his books will last as long as there are enough men in the world worthy of having them—Durante (Location 1398)

And for this third cause of her illness, if she had had anything to do that was worth doing, she might have borne his bad behaviour so that even that would not have made her ill. It is not always easy, I confess, to find something to do that is worth doing, but the most difficult things are constantly being done, and she might have found something if she had tried. Her fault lay in this, that she had not tried. But, to be sure, her father and mother were to blame that they had never set her going. Only then again, nobody had told her father and mother that they ought to set her going in that direction. So as none of them would find it out of themselves, North Wind had to teach them. (Location 1559)

It is a hard thing for a rich man to grow poor; but it is an awful thing for him to grow dishonest, and some kinds of speculation lead a man deep into dishonesty before he thinks what he is about. Poverty will not make a man worthless—he may be worth a great deal more when he is poor than he was when he was rich; but dishonesty goes very far indeed to make a man of no value—a thing to be thrown out in the dust-hole of the creation, like a bit of a broken basin, or a dirty rag. So North Wind had to look after Mr. Coleman, and try to make an honest man of him. So she sank the ship which was his last venture, and he was what himself and his wife and the world called ruined. (Location 1569)

When the cause of suffering is most deeply hidden in the heart, and nobody knows anything about it but the man himself, he must be a great and a good man indeed, such as few of us have known, if the pain inside him does not make him behave so as to cause all about him to be more or less uncomfortable. (Location 1578)

And instead of helping his mother to be miserable at the change, he began to find out all the advantages of the place; for every place has some advantages, and they are always better worth knowing than the disadvantages. (Location 1783)

And with a good fire, and tea and bread and butter, things cannot be said to be miserable. (Location 1787)

"This will never do. I can't give in to this. I've been to the back of the north wind. Things go right there, and so I must try to get things to go right here. I've got to fight the miserable things. They shan't make me miserable if I can help it." (Location 1790)

And when heart and head go together, nothing can stand before them. (Location 1793)

His little heart was so full of merriment that it could not hold it all, and it ran over into theirs. (Location 1802)

It was dreadful to Diamond to hear the scolding and the crying. But it could not make him miserable, because he had been at the back of the north wind. (Location 1812)

there was nothing left but some lovely picture of water or grass or daisies, or something else very common, but with all the commonness polished off it, and the lovely soul of it, which people so seldom see, and, alas! yet seldomer believe in, shining out. (Location 1828)

But to try to make others comfortable is the only way to get right comfortable ourselves, and that comes partly of not being able to think so much about ourselves when we are helping other people. (Location 1837)

For our Selves will always do pretty well if we don't pay them too much attention. Our Selves are like some little children who will be happy enough so long as they are left to their own games, but when we begin to interfere with them, and make them presents of too nice playthings, or too many sweet things, they begin at once to fret and spoil. (Location 1838)

You see when he forgot his Self his mother took care of his Self, and loved and praised his Self. Our own praises poison our Selves, and puff and swell them up, till they lose all shape and beauty, and become like great toadstools. But the praises of father or mother do our Selves good, and comfort them and make them beautiful. They never do them any harm. (Location 1844)

"Very well, my man," said his father, and took the reins (Location 1903)

Diamond learned to drive all the sooner that he had been accustomed to do what he was told, and could obey the smallest hint in a moment. Nothing helps one to get on like that. Some people don't know how to do what they are told; they have not been used to it, and they neither understand quickly nor are able to turn what they do understand into action quickly. With an obedient mind one learns the rights of things fast enough; for it is the law of the universe, and to obey is to understand. (Location 1929)

Some may think it was not the best place in the world for him to be brought up in; but it must have been, for there he was. (Location 1963)

To be sure it's the law; but mayhap they may get more law than they like some day themselves." (Location 2005)

"And what's your fare, Joseph?" "No, thank you, ma'am," said Joseph. "It was your own old horse as took you; and me you paid long ago." He jumped on his box before she could say another word, and with a parting salute drove off, leaving them on the pavement, with the maid holding the door for them. (Location 2044)

Thereupon Diamond thought it time that somebody did something, and as himself was the only somebody at hand, he must go and see whether he could not do something. (Location 2083)

They would have begun by scolding the idiotic cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the wailing baby. (Location 2096)

through it all he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St. John it was perfect blessedness. (Location 2104)

His father was silent, for he saw that Diamond was right, and was ashamed to find himself more ungrateful than he had thought. (Location 2260)

But I don't quite understand, father: is nobody your friend but the one that does something for you?" "No, I won't say that, my boy. You would have to leave out baby then." "Oh no, I shouldn't. Baby can laugh in your face, and crow in your ears, and make you feel so happy. Call you that nothing, father?" The father's heart was fairly touched now. (Location 2264)

"But when people want to do right, things about them will try to help them. Only they must kill the snake, you know." "I was sure the snake had something to do with it," cried Diamond triumphantly. (Location 2425)

I will give them one very short answer: it means one who understands things without any other body telling him what they mean. God makes a few such now and then to teach the rest of us. (Location 2444)

Oh, father, think if you had been a poor man, and hadn't had a cab and old Diamond! (Location 2623)

Nonsense is a very good thing, ain't it, mother?—a little of it now and then; more of it for baby, and not so much for grown people like cabmen and their mothers? It's like the pepper and salt that goes in the soup—that's it—isn't it, mother? (Location 2640)

There are not many people who can think about beautiful things and do common work at the same time. (Location 2781)

He had put off their marriage more than once in a cowardly fashion, merely because he was ashamed to marry upon a small income, and live in a humble way. When a man thinks of what people will say in such a case, he may love, but his love is but a poor affair. (Location 2815)

his troubles had done him no end of good, for they had made him doubt himself, and begin to think, so that he had come to see that he had been foolish as well as wicked. (Location 2820)

Before he got home again, he had even begun to understand that no man can make haste to be rich without going against the will of God, in which case it is the one frightful thing to be successful. (Location 2823)

his father seemed ever so much better from finding that his boy was already not only useful to his family but useful to other people, and quite taking his place as a man who judged what was wise, and did work worth doing. (Location 2863)

and in every one of them a child, whose face was a story in itself. (Location 2883)

Meantime Mr. Raymond was going from bed to bed, talking to the little people. Every one knew him, and every one was eager to have a look, and a smile, and a kind word from him. (Location 2916)

very grand to have the first telling; and I daresay there might be a peculiar freshness about it, because everything would be nearly as new to the story-teller himself as to the listeners. (Location 2934)

But I never knew of any interference on the part of the wicked fairy that did not turn out a good thing in the end. (Location 2968)

somehow even the wickedest of creatures likes a pretext for doing the wrong thing. (Location 2978)

But it is all of no consequence, for what they do never succeeds; nay, in the end it brings about the very thing they are trying to prevent. (Location 3217)

Angels don't fight—do they, sir?" "Not to get things for themselves, at least," said Mr. Raymond. (Location 3281)