"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much left of the steamer, and I am not justified in throwing away the lives of my men," replied a very spruce-looking officer. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... even higher into the thin air, and in company with thousands and tens of thousands they drift southward, sending vague notes down, but themselves invisible to us, save when now and then a tiny black mote floats across the face of the moon—an army of feathered mites, passing from tundra and spruce to ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... began their operations immediately, to find the rate of the time-keeper, and to make other observations. The remainder of the empty water-casks were also sent on shore, with the cooper to trim, and a sufficient number of sailors to fill them. Two men were appointed to brew spruce beer; and the carpenter and his crew were ordered to cut wood. A boat, with a party of men, under the direction of one of the mates, was sent to collect grass for our cattle; and the people that remained on board were employed in refitting the ship, and arranging the provisions. In this manner ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... invite our notice, would interfere with the main object of our visit. We have come for a special purpose, and we can only allude to a very few of the species to which our attention may be supposed to be directed. A white spruce, in rich luxuriance, measuring, as the branches trail upon the sward, upwards of sixty feet in circumference; the Himalayan white pine, with its deep fringe-like foliage, twenty-five feet in height; the Cephalonian fir, with leaves as pungent as an Auricaria, twenty feet high, and many ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... hint thus given, our hero, when Hall was over made himself uncommonly spruce in a new white tie, and spotless kids; and as he was dressing, drew a mental picture of the party to which he was going. It was to be composed of quiet, steady men, who were such hard readers as to be called "fast ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... explorers plunged into a sweet-scented forest of spruce and birches, threaded by narrow wood roads, and tramped for miles, stopping now and then to examine some outcropping ledge or gather a handful of snow-white capilear berries. But the main object of their quest, the copper-bearing serpentine, was not found ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... in chambers in the Albany, did Fledgeby, and maintained a spruce appearance. But his youthful fire was all composed of sparks from the grindstone; and as the sparks flew off, went out, and never warmed anything, be sure that Fledgeby had his tools at the grindstone, and turned it with a ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... a cluster of Chippewa wigwams, And the busy wives plying with skill their nets in the emerald waters. Two hundred white winters and more have fled from the face of the Summer Since DuLuth, on that wild, somber shore, in the unbroken forest primeval, From the midst of the spruce and the pines, saw the smoke of the wigwams up-curling, Like the fumes from the temples and shrines of the Druids of old in their forests. Ah, little he dreamed then, forsooth, that a city would stand on that hill-side, And bear the proud name of Duluth, the untiring and dauntless explorer. ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... see no fun in bein' a rusticator anyway, down there by the sea-wall on a hot day, settin' up agin' a spruce tree admirin' the lan'scape, with ants an' pitch ekally ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... very spruce in her new Safety Scout uniform, was dancing up and down before the mirrors while Bob's blouse was having the buttons set ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... trail that meandered among the spruce and pine, skirting the edges of the mountain meadows and keeping within the timber, Cheyenne finally reached the main ridge of the range. Occasionally he dismounted and examined the ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... right, Nelse, I been looken' fo' you some time. Now if yo' done got yo' fill o' seen' the world, 'spose yo' go down an' look at the new colt I got, an' take yo' ole place in the stable. Yo' jes' got back in time to spruce up the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the garden as she was desired, and found the six lizards, which she put into her apron and brought to the faery. Another touch of the wonderful wand soon converted them into six spruce footmen in dashing liveries, with powdered hair and pig-tails, three-cornered cocked hats and gold-headed canes, who immediately jumped up behind the carriage as nimbly as if they had been footmen and nothing else ...
— Cinderella • Henry W. Hewet
... Materialists applies only to the form, for as a carpenter uses material from a certain pile of lumber to build a house in which he afterwards lives, so does the spirit take the substance wherewith to build its house from the parents. The carpenter cannot build a house of hard wood from spruce lumber and the spirit also must build a body which is like those from which the material was taken, but the theory of Heredity does not apply upon the moral plane, for it is a notorious fact, that in the rogues galleries ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... to remain alone; she resolved to go into the drawing-room; perhaps her brother was there. As she approached the door somebody knocked on the outside, then there entered a dark man of spruce appearance, who drew back a step as soon as he ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... here to describe a day's shooting. Let it suffice to say that a little before nightfall we arrived at a place where was a snowy mound capped by a clump of spruce firs of small size but ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... vast attest to the force of heat. Each failure of the sun by one degree is marked by a lower realm of life. The northern slope of each hollow is less boreal than its southern side. The pine and spruce have given out long ago; the mountain-ash went next; the birch and willow climbed up half the slope. Here, nothing grows but creeping plants and moss. The plain itself is pale grayish green, one vast expanse of reindeer-moss, but warmed at spots into orange by great beds ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... set up the astronomer's observatory, and the forge for the iron work, and to erect tents for the sailmakers and coopers. They applied themselves, also, to the brewing of beer from the branches or leaves of a tree, which greatly resembled the American black spruce. Captain Cook was persuaded, from the knowledge which he had of this tree, and from the similarity it bore to the spruce, that, with the addition of inspissated juice of wort and molasses, it would make a very wholesome liquor, and supply the want of vegetables, of which ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... the side of steep cliffs, overhanging a mountain stream, they were not frightened. But when they began to grow tired, and the trail led them into a dark forest, where the sun came through the thick boughs and shone only in patches of light upon the slippery spruce needles, ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... widens, the trail leads farther from the river and through dense forests. The woods are so silent that they become oppressive, and the air is damp, for the sunlight is almost excluded. The tall trees, fir, hemlock, and spruce, with now and then a cedar, stand close together. Shrubs of many kinds are crowded among them, while mosses and ferns cover the ground. The fallen trunks are wrapped in moss, and young trees are growing upon them, drawing their nourishment from the decaying tissues. In ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... Philip!" and the poor soldier went towards the laburnum-tree; but when he stood three paces away, the Countess eyed him almost defiantly, though there was timidity in her eyes; then at a bound she sprang from the laburnum to an acacia, and thence to a spruce-fir, swinging from bough to bough ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... utmost fairyland Across the wintry snows; He makes the fir-tree and the spruce To ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... opposed them. But so it was, as great men and princes are said to call in their flatterers when dinner has been served, so the Athenians, upon slight occasions, entertained and diverted themselves with their spruce speakers and trim orators, but when it came to action, they were sober and considerate enough to single out the austerest and wisest for public employment, however much he might be opposed to their wishes and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and saw that it was a servant-maid of fifteen or sixteen, who was indeed extremely winsome and spruce. As soon however as the maid caught a glimpse of Chia Yuen, she speedily turned herself round and withdrew out of sight. But, as luck would have it, it happened that Pei Ming was coming along, and seeing the servant-maid in front of the door, he observed: "Welcome, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... head of Barclay, Murray, and Warren. On the Park Row or Chatham Street side a barricade stretched across Beekman Street; another, in the shape of a right angle, stood in Printing House Square, one face opposite Spruce Street, the other looking across the Presbyterian churchyard and Nassau Street;[62] another ran across Frankfort Street; another at the entrance of Centre Street; and still another near it, ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... all cases the nests are placed high in hemlocks or pines, which are the bird's favorite resorts. From all accounts the nests of this species are elegantly and compactly made, consisting of a densely woven mass of spruce twigs, soft vegetable down, rootlets, and fine shreds of bark. The lining is often intermixed with horse hairs and feathers. Four eggs of greenish-white or very pale bluish-green, speckled or spotted, have usually been ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... that very dark shadow from the spruce there, Ranald," she cried, pointing to a deep, black turn in the road. For answer there came from behind them the long, mournful hunting-cry of the wolf. He was on their track. Immediately it was answered by a chorus of howls from the bush on the swamp side, but still far away. There was ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... its office first in humble quarters in Spruce street, and since then it has occupied rooms in Beekman, John and Reade streets. These down-town locations have served some valuable purposes. They were accessible to the teachers and workers in passing to and from the South, and in the shipment of goods to the South and to Africa—once a large ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... A forest of stunted spruce trees edged on the lake, and soon its dreary solitudes rang to the strokes of axes. The trees were small and uniform in size. Black stumps protruded, here and there, from the ground, showing work of the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... him to and fro. And now was I minded to choke him outright, but, even then, spied a cavalier who spurred his horse against me. Hereupon I dashed the breathless Gregory aside and turned to meet my new assailant, a spruce young gallant he, from curling lovelock to Spanish boots. I remember cursing savagely as his whip caught me, then, or ever he could reach me again, I sprang in beneath the head of his rearing horse and seizing the rein close by the bridle began to drag ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a huge Norway spruce and it was set up in front of the high school which had a lawn before it large enough to hold a goodly crowd of observers. The choirs of all the churches had volunteered their services for the occasion. They were placed on ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... more apparent than in the preparation here at Scheveningen for centuries of summer visitors, while at our Long Island hotel there was a losing bet on a scant generation of them. When it seemed likely that it might be a winning bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, and ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... House the place teems with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn, till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine, imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long together the life in ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... men—lads and lasses too—there, halt a bit. Mrs. Fairfield, do you hear?—halt! I think his reverence has given us a capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the hay-makers. Harry, [this in whisper,] catch the Parson, and tell him to come to ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... stirred the generous spruce and darkening pinewoods. The drooping, westering sun, already athwart the barren crown of the hill tops, left a false, velvety suggestion of twilight in the heart of the valley, while a depressing superheat enervated all life, except ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. A ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... the hottest parts of South America Europeans are perfectly acclimatized, and where the race is kept pure it seems to be even improved. Some very valuable notes on this subject were furnished to the present writer by the well-known botanist, Richard Spruce, who resided many years in South America, but who was prevented by ill health from publishing his researches (see A. R. Wallace, Notes of a Botannist, 1908). As a careful, judicious and accurate observer, both of man and nature, he had few superiors. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... sot up with Miss S., sez she to me, sez she,— "Without you git religion, Sir, the thing can't never be; Nut but wut I respeck," sez she, "your intellectle part, But you wun't noways du for me athout a change o' heart: Nothun religion works wal North, but it's ez soft ez spruce, Compared to ourn, for keepin' sound," sez she, "upon the goose; A day's experunce'd prove to ye, ez easy 'z pull a trigger, It takes the Southun pint o' view to raise ten bales a nigger; You'll fin' thet human ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... they threaded the spruce forest down by the sea, and found the "camp," a wooden box, with a broad veranda ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... elaborately set out with silver-branched candlesticks and all the Governor-General's fine collection of plate, but the servants waited in heavy fur-coats and caps. Of course no flowers could be used in that temperature, so the silver vases held branches of spruce, hemlock, and other Canadian firs. The French cook had to be very careful as to what dishes he prepared, for anything with moisture in it would freeze at once; meringues, for instance, would be frozen into uneatable cricket-balls, and tea, coffee, and soup ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... struggle back. The sun has set on fair Naushon Long ere my western blaze is gone; The ocean disk is rolling dark In shadows round your swinging bark, While yet the yellow sunset fills The stream that scarfs my spruce-clad hills; The day-star wakes your island deer Long ere my barnyard chanticleer; Your mists are soaring in the blue While mine are sparks of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... variously the controversie hath been manag'd, the modesty, and ingenuity of this Author hath rendred, his designe more plausible, for having without any private regard (in such cases most usuall to the spruce and flourishing Air of his owne Native tongue) made that noble Language of the Romans the Basis of his project; And finding him throughout altogether free from prejudice and partiality, I thought an anteview of so excellent and usefull, a designe would not ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier
... they could, some playing seven up, others playing billiards, and others looking on. Some of the truly good people in town thought the boys were pretty tough, and they wore long faces and prayed for the blockade to raise so the spruce looking chaps ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... into the more crowded district again. She began to be a little perturbed, forgot her anger; at least it was dimmed. Coming to Spruce Street she saw the usual crowd of men hanging about the door of the Ardmore. They always stood there, clustered about on the steps, with their cigarettes and their half-burned cigars and their flashy clothes and their burnt-out eyes and their appraising looks. ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... it may, the tip of the propeller blade touched him and simultaneously many things happened. The lifeless body of Ska, torn and bleeding, dropped plummet-like toward the ground; a bit of splintered spruce drove backward to strike the pilot on the forehead; the plane shuddered and trembled and as Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick sank forward in momentary unconsciousness the ship dived headlong ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Spenser is published with prints, designed by Kent; but the most execrable performance you ever beheld. The graving not worse than the drawing; awkward knights, scrambling Unas, hills tumbling down themselves, no variety Of prospect and three or four perpetual spruce firs. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... wonderful garden. She and Old Aaron lived in a little gray cube of a house that had its front face set straight to the edge of Charlotte Street. However, the north side of the cube looked into a great green yard where tall spruce trees, overrun with trumpet vines and woodbine, shaded long beds of flowers that love semi-shady places. The rear of the house overlooked an old-fashioned garden enclosed with a white-washed picket fence. Always were there flowers ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... consist of a variety of trees, but only one kind, the Douglas spruce, is suitable for good lumber. The quaking aspen is the only deciduous tree that is abundant. Elk and deer browse about these trees and keep them trimmed at a ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... of a mushroom 'Mark,' Young guns, intolerably spruce, Have cast thee from the social 'park'; Which, to their humbled patriarch, Must be the ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... busily at the bell-rope. The old people of the village came stooping along the street. Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days. When the throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... are located in or around Printing House Square, immediately opposite and east of the City Hall. One of the greatest curiosities of this square is a huge engine, which runs a large number of presses. It is situated in Spruce street, between William and Nassau streets, and occupies the basement of the building in which it is located. There are two engines here—one of 150 horse power, which is used during the day, and a smaller one of 75 horse power, which relieves it at night. Shafting and belting carry the power ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... along through the wood in great fear; and the wild beasts roared about her, but none did her any harm. In the evening she came to a little cottage, and went in there to rest herself, for her weary feet would carry her no further. Everything was spruce and neat in the cottage: on the table was spread a white cloth, and there were seven little plates with seven little loaves and seven little glasses with wine in them; and knives and forks laid in order, and by the wall stood ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... a little creek of the uninhabited island, driving her right up on the beach for safety's sake, there being no anchor. Then—Neil carrying a small basket the while and Duncan a coil of rope—they passed through a wood of young larches and spruce, the air smelling strongly of bracken and meadow-sweet after the rain; and finally they reached the rocky eminence on which stood the ruins. There was no way up, for tourists did not come that way, and the owner of the island, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... roll-call, just after sunset, I should say. He would like time to spruce up a bit and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... was a full-size bed blanket of heavy gray wool. The man's ingenuity seemed endless. Without seeming to have any extra luggage, he had nevertheless carried a very efficient camp outfit with him. He took his hunting knife, went to the spruce grove and cut many small, green branches, returning with all he could hold in his arms. She watched him lay them tips up for a mattress, and was secretly glad that she knew this much at least of camp comfort. He spread the blanket over them ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... melancholy, too; but presently, with reviving faith to urge them, opened wide and heartily, and began to twinkle again. The bar was in festive array: Christmas greens, red berries, ribbons, tissue-paper and gleaming tinfoil—flash of mirrors, bright colour, branches of pine, cedar and spruce from the big balsamic woods. It was crowded with lumber-jacks—great fellows from the forest, big of body and passion, here gathered in celebration of the festival. John Fairmeadow, getting all at once and vigorously ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... topped the rise and leveled to the tree-girdled mesa. Young Pete stared. This was the most beautiful spot he had ever seen. Ringed round by a great forest of spruce, the Blue Mesa lay shimmering in the sunset like an emerald lake, beneath a cloudless sky tinged with crimson, gold, and amethyst. Across the mesa stood a cabin, the only dwelling in that silent expanse. And ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... Penn in laying out Philadelphia was Thomas Holme. It was at the close of the year 1682, that the town was surveyed, and the boundaries of the streets marked on the trunks of the chestnut, walnut, locust, spruce, pine and other forest trees covering the land. Many of the streets were named for the forest monarchs on which these inscriptions were cut, and still bear the names. The growth of the town was rapid, and, within a year after the surveyor had finished this work, almost a hundred houses ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... and Vermont,—abundant, filling swamps acres in extent, alone or associated with other trees, mostly black spruce; growing depressed and scattered on Katahdin at an altitude of 4000 feet; Massachusetts,—rather common, at least northward; Rhode Island,—not reported; Connecticut,—occasional in the northern half of the state; reported as far ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... sovereign," or the son of one, free in his habits as the Indian that roamed the prairies of his frontier home? He had not heard of "the latest fashion," and paid no attention to the cut of his garments, although, it must be confessed, he sometimes wished them a trifle more spruce and comfortable. His home, as I have hinted, was on the prairie. Nevertheless, the family domain was an unpretending one. Less than an acre, fenced in the rudest manner, enclosed the "farm and farm buildings," the latter consisting of a small log house and log pigsty, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... and glittering bayonets he caught the flourish of energetic drumsticks. The big drum gave forth its clamor with window-shaking insistence; it seemed to be the summons of power that all else should stand aside. On they came, these spruce Guards, each man a marching machine, trained to strut and pose exactly as his fellows. There was a sense of omnipotence in their rhythmic movement. And they all had the grand manner—from the elegant captain in command down to ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... been sick of the scurvy at Stadacona, so that Cartier was much surprised to see him out and well. He contrived to make him relate the particulars of his recovery, and thus found out that a decoction of the bark and foliage of the white spruce-tree furnished the savages with a remedy. Having recourse to this enabled the French captain to arrest the progress of the disease among his own people, and, in a short time, to bring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... aboard. Then they snaked me on to the caboose platform when the train was under way, pulled me inside and ran me half a mile up the track before they could stop her again. But that half-mile did the business for Mr. Howard. There he was spruce and dandified as you please, dressed fit to kill in a bang-up better suit than I ever hope to own, trying to sit behind a newspaper. They pulled Burtis aboard, too, and in the scuffle he fell all over Howard, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... fashion,—the far-off days when fashion itself had not become old-fashioned and got improved into Smart Society,—this haunted half-mile or more still retains many fine old residences of brown stone and of red brick, which are spruce and well-kept. One such, on the west side of the street, of red brick, with a high stoop of brown stone, is a boarding-house, and in it is an apartment to which, on a certain clear, cold afternoon in October, the reader's presence in the ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... not; but Paul and I believe it will be the coming wood for them," said John with enthusiasm. "We have used it plain on this machine. On a large airplane it ought to be reinforced with transverse sections of very thin spruce laid latticewise. That would add considerably to its natural strength, and increase ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... and charming about London in April. The parks are aglow with young green, and the trees nod cheerfully to the little breeze that dances round them, whispering of summer. Even the houses perk up under their spruce new coats of paint, while every window that can afford it puts forth its carefully tended box of flowers. It is as though the old city suddenly awoke from her winter slumber and preened herself ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... smaller and smaller before my eyes. Then he edged sidewise to a great stump, hid himself among the roots, and stood stock-still,—a beautiful picture of innocence and curiosity, framed in the rough brown roots of the spruce stump. It was his first teaching to hide and be still. Just as he needed it most, he had forgotten absolutely ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... indivisa, a species of palm, are planted at short intervals throughout the length of the boulevard. Against the dull buff of the palace walls are banked Monterey cypress and Lawson cypress, with a heavy undergrowth of fir and spruce. The attractive lawns add a touch of formality to the impressive Avenue. Whatever effect of newness might have appeared in the walls of the great palaces is mellowed by Guerin's colors and there is a splendid ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... standard hunting arrows: The first requisite is the shaft. Having tested birch, maple, hickory, oak, ash, poplar, alder, red cedar, mahogany, palma brava, Philippine nara, Douglas fir, red pine, white pine, spruce, Port Orford cedar, yew, willow, hazel, eucalyptus, redwood, elderberry, and bamboo, we have adopted birch as the most rigid, toughest and suitable in weight for hunting arrows. Douglas fir and Norway pine are best for target ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... is water a-swash in our boots; Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles, And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes; We gather our herds at the head, Where the axes have toppled them loose, And down from the hills where the rivers are fed We harry the hemlock and spruce. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... should stop at home for a few days and help him with the new enclosure. To this Edward cheerfully consented; and as soon as they arrived at the cottage, and Humphrey had had his breakfast, they took their axes and went out to fell at a cluster of small spruce-firs ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... seemed to hesitate. "Well," he began slowly, "I've often heard my father tell it. When they came to that tree with the mark on it, grandfather said, 'Boys, we have reached our home. Let us thank God.' He went up to a big spruce tree, drove his ax in to the butt, then kneeled down with the two little boys beside him, and I have heard my father say that when he looked away up between the big trees and saw the bit of blue sky there, he thought God was listening at that blue hole between the tree-tops." Martin ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... when he takes off his hat one notices that he is getting a little bald. His skin is pink and unwrinkled, and his hair and moustache are so light that one does not notice whether they are turning grey or not, and he looks as spruce as ever. Baxendale always has been particular about his appearance, and he is never so pleased as when you ask him the name of his tailor. But his reply in that case is deprecating, implying that he doesn't think very much of him, do you? which is intended to draw further ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... the sky to unthinkable heights, they stand as living monuments to the fecundity of natural life. Imagine, if you can, the vast wide region of the West coast, hills, slopes and valleys, covered with millions of fir, spruce and cedar trees, raising their verdant crests a hundred, two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet into ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... he was a useful young fellow enough, and clean and spruce; but lately, he has become shabby and dirty, and is going to ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... to be scrapped. Two of the types manufactured proved to be unsatisfactory and were condemned, with an estimated loss of twenty-six million dollars. Finally the bitter cold of the winter made it difficult to secure the indispensable spruce from the northwestern forests, and lumbering operations were hampered by extensive strikes, which were said to have ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... despite the flame of desire in his bowels, just nosed and tasted, eating no more than an ordinary workaday ration. Long before the final stage of bone-gnawing he actually walked away and curled himself down at the roots of a big spruce where the ground rose slightly, some fifty paces distant from ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... looked at each other with blank dismay, They simply hadn't a word to say. He thought with a shiver: "Can this be she?" She thought with a shudder: "This can't be he?" This simpering dandy, so sleek and spruce; This languorous lily in garments loose; They sought to brace from the awful shock: Taking a seat, they tried to talk. She spoke of Bergson and Pater's prose, He prattled of dances and ragtime shows; She ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... knew that my designs were honourable and virtuous; and I know that they often said as much to Leonisa, in order to dispose her to receive me as her betrothed; but she had set her heart on Cornelio, the son of Ascanio Rotulo, whom you well know—a spruce young gallant, point-de-vice in his attire, with white hands, curly locks, mellifluous voice, amorous discourse—made up, in short, of amber and sugar-paste, garnished with plumes and brocade. She never cared to bestow a look ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Abies communis and pectinata, by pinching with wire the leading and all the lateral shoots excepting one. But we believe that they were too old when experimented on; and some were pinched too severely, and [page 188] some not enough. Only one case succeeded, namely, with the spruce-fir. The leading shoot was not killed, but its growth was checked; at its base there were three lateral shoots in a whorl, two of which were pinched, one being thus killed; the third was left untouched. These lateral shoots, when operated on (July 14th) stood at ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... a sheltered bay, into which flowed a little creek of pure, sparkling water, overshadowed by great, low-branching cotton-woods and tall, feathery silver spruce trees. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... of all colors," said Hattie, soliloquizing. "Red morocco Bibles and hymn-books. What a white cloud of a turban! Part of the choir, I take it,—those, with their singing-books. Elegant spruce young fellow, isn't he, Aunt? with the violoncello. Venerable old couple, there! over eighty, both of them. Well," continued Hattie, "I will give up, ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... thin grayish hair was rather long—not of that pronounced length which inevitably challenges the decision of the bystander as to whether the wearer be fool or poet, but still long enough to fall a little carelessly round the head and so take off from the spruce conventional effect of the owner's irreproachable ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... spruce and limber yellow-hammer In the dawn of spring and sultry summer, In hedge or tree the hours beguiling With notes as of one who ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... presented to the mighty river a low chain of hills, fringed at the base with a scattered growth of scrubby spruce, birch, willow, and cotton-wood. Timber line was only two hundred feet above the river brink; beyond that height, rocks and moss covered ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... shedding her silver light from a clear heaven. The air was not oppressive, and it was scented with the perfume of the lilacs and apple-blossoms, so that Gorham was fain every now and then to draw a deep breath in order to inhale their fragrance. There was no dust, and nature looked spruce and trig, without a taint of the frowziness which is observable in the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... turned first into the sitting-room, where he found no one, and then into a rear room opening from it. This obviously was a boy's "den." On the table in the centre were a checkerboard, some loose string, a handful of spruce gum, some scattered marbles, a broken jack-knife, a cap, a shot-pouch, an old bird's nest, a powder-flask, a dog-eared copy of "Caesar's Commentaries," open, and a Latin dictionary, also open. In a corner stood a fishing-rod in its cotton case; along the wall were ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... sustenance to see her for a moment! To leave my work and go without food was the least of it! I must traverse the streets of Paris without getting splashed, run to escape showers, and reach her rooms at last, as neat and spruce as any of the coxcombs about her. For a poet and a distracted wooer the difficulties of this task were endless. My happiness, the course of my love, might be affected by a speck of mud upon my only white ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... a spruce young gentleman, in a loud summer suit, with a rose in his button-hole, and the air of assurance which befits the commissioner ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... They came in the Firebird, their automobile, and declared that they would camp out in the open Maine woods, cook in the open, make soups of lily bulbs, stirred with the aromatic boughs of the spruce, and otherwise conform to all the glorious hardships peculiar to the pioneers—according to the stories ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... head, Ramon could look into the heart of the mountains whence the stream issued through a narrow canyon, with steep, forested ridges on either side, and little level glades along the water, set with tall, conical blue spruce trees, pines with their warm red boles, and little clumps of aspen with gleaming white stems, and trembling leaves of mingled ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... Douglas fir, white, Norway, and Colorado blue varieties of spruce. Besides these, I planted balsam fir, red cedar, Juniperus Virginiana, and white cedar, Arborvitae. Practically all of these trees are still growing and many ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... about a twelvemonth in my new place, a very pleasant little shop, though the pay was less and the work harder than I had had with Monsieur C——, when, one morning, standing at the shop-window, I saw that gentleman pass: very brisk, very spruce, very plump he looked. Glancing in, (I flatter myself that a show-window arranged as I could arrange it would attract any one's eye,) he espied me. A speedy recognition and a long conversation were the result. It was early morning, and we had the store to ourselves. Monsieur ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... land of Nova Scotia, a maritime province, there is a ridge called North Mountain, overlooking the Bay of Fundy on one side and the fertile Annapolis valley on the other. On the northern slope of the range grows the hardy spruce-tree, well adapted for ship-timbers, of which many vessels of all classes have been built. The people of this coast, hardy, robust, and strong, are disposed to compete in the world's commerce, and it is nothing against the master mariner if the ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... an humble mind, a meet spirit clothed in rags, beg, and now ready to be starved? To see a silly contemptible sloven in apparel, ragged in his coat, polite in speech, of a divine spirit, wise? another neat in clothes, spruce, full of courtesy, empty of grace, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... hot after him, and he knew not how to defend himself. His photograph was implored. He was waylaid by journalists shabby and by journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made him squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. Photographers entreated him to sit free of charge. What irritated him in the whole vast affair was the continual insistence upon his lack of years. Nobody seemed ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... boiling, and then she sent one of the men across with a boat to the store, giving him a message for Miles, which resulted in a basket of fresh fish coming over at once. These, delicately broiled over a fire of spruce chips, and served piping hot, made, as Mr. Selincourt observed, a supper ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... people slept he caused birch, spruce, and cottonwood trees to spring up in the low places, and when the people awoke in the morning they clapped their hands in delight, for the birds were singing in the tree-tops and the green leaves with the sunlight flickering through them made it seem ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... Gramps was, at the close of this peaceful summer day, indulging in a mental congratulation of himself on being so favorably situated in life. Everybody recognized Farmer Gramps as being the wealthiest man in all Spruce Township. He owned the finest and fattest horses that were driven to Mount Olivet Church. His cattle roamed the forests for miles around, and his hogs cracked ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison
... class. Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed along, and left with us that pleasant woodsy smell belonging to fresh leaves. One of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce. 'Let me discourse on a theme I understand,' said the President. 'I know all about trees, by right of being a backwoodsman. I'll show you the difference between spruce, pine, and cedar, and this shred of green, which ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... sweeping north to their breeding grounds in Canada, and the other wheeling westward and ascending to the alpine heights among the mountains, where they find the subartic conditions that are congenial to their natures without travelling so great a distance. Here they build their nests in the pine or spruce trees, rear their families, and as autumn approaches, descend to the plains, tarry there a week or two, then hie to their winter ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... lass is hard-working and spruce, and keeps everything round herself ... what d'you call it. And in our poverty, you know, it's a pair of hands, I mean; and the wedding needn't cost much. But the chief thing's the offence, the offence to the lass, and she's a what d'you call it, an orphan, ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... but there were some timber cutters at work in the woods near-by, and a greasy man-cook stood in the doorway of the long log cabin where the gang put up throughout the winter, while conducting their operations of leveling the forest, or, at least, robbing it of all the spruce for the pulp ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... swimming circle glides Swift without stop: the old bashaws click time, As if on polish'd ice; in trance sublime The iman hoar with some spruce courtier slides. Nor rank nor age from capering refrain; Nor can the king his royal foot restrain! He too must reel amid the frolic row, Grasp the grand vizier by his beard of snow, And teach the aged man once more to bound amain!" WIELAND, Oberon ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... are characterized by a heavy growth of giant pines, with firs and spruce in the highest parts, and many groves of scrub oak. The pines are abundant and make excellent lumber. Going downward they merge into pinons, useful for firewood but valueless as timber, and these in turn give place to junipers and ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff
... tree that was reflected there. He even claimed that he got a splinter in his hand, so doing! Upside down or wedged across a channel under water, trees were all the same to Hervey Willetts. He lived in trees. He knew nothing whatever about the different kinds of trees and he could not tell spruce from walnut. But he could hang by one leg from a rotten branch, the while playing a harmonica. He was for the boy scout movement, because he was for movement generally. As long as the scouts kept moving, he was with them. He had a lot of ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a prodigiously fat man, with a pigeon breast, and a neck so short that his tufted chin was set low down between his high shoulders. He was dressed in actual burlesque of the fashion then prevailing; but, spruce as he was, he nursed undisguisedly a huge quid of tobacco in one clean-shaven cheek, and his hands, which were covered with rings of no great apparent value, were very dirty, and the nails uncared for. He bowed with ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... know what those children are going to do," said Meg as she and Bobby walked down Spruce Avenue, "but I am awfully glad they found homes for the kittens; Mr. Fritz will be glad, too. I don't believe he wanted them drowned, but he didn't know what to do ...
— Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School • Mabel C. Hawley
... evergreen-forests, and elsewhere by the lighter green of deciduous woods, lay on the starboard side, warm-looking and welcome to the eyes. This shore, as then seen, reminded me more than any other ever did of the Spanish coast on the approach to Gibraltar,—the spruce woods answering in hue to olive-groves, the other to the green of vines. Meanwhile, the palpitating sheen on the land, the star-sprinkled blueness of the sea, together with the softness of the delicious day, brought vividly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... come under an old spruce fir, Reynard threw the cock on the ground, and set his paw on his breast, and was going to take a bite: "You are a heathen, Reynard!" said the cock. "Good Christians say grace before ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... the mountains which lay beyond the further shore, the sky was murky with the smoke of unseen forest fires, and through this the afternoon sun broke feebly, throwing a vague radiance to earth, and unreal shadows. To the sky-line of the four quarters—spruce-shrouded islands, dark waters, and ice-scarred rocky ridges—stretched the immaculate wilderness. No sign of human existence broke the solitude; no sound the stillness. The land seemed bound under the unreality of the unknown, wrapped in the brooding ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... topmost source—fons et origo—of our chosen river. This single spring, crystal-clear and ice-cold, gushing out of the hillside in a forest of spruce and yellow birch and sugar maple, gave us the clue that we must follow for a week through ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... appearance, and have kept up the shadow and image of London. They wear shiny frock-coats and the worst-brushed and most odd-shaped of top-hats, and imagine they are well-dressed; at least I suppose they do, for they seem to have a sort of contempt for the spruce tweed suits and round hats of 'new chums,' and such of the rising generation as have followed their example and adopted that fashion. Can you imagine yourself wearing a black coat and high hat with the thermometer jogging about from ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... drink. A handful of hops, to a pailful of water, and a half-pint of molasses, makes good hop beer. Spruce mixed with hops is pleasanter than hops alone. Boxberry, fever-bush, sweet fern, and horseradish make a good and healthy diet-drink. The winter evergreen, or rheumatism weed, thrown in, is very beneficial to humors. Be careful and not mistake kill-lamb ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... I have put on my pack, so as to wait without worry. Having marched very dry yesterday, and a pebble which I hastily scooped up proving large and rough, I have provided myself (per one buzzard) with a package of chewing gum. Oh for the old-fashioned spruce, with no sweetness or artificial flavor!—The first battalion, having packed entirely, is assembling for the march. My map is buttoned in my shirt, for consultation at halts. The day is warm, with the wind from the west; but there are gathering clouds, and ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... mulch. Solanum Dulcamara. Solanum jasminoides. solidagos. Sophora Japonica. Sorbus species. sorrel. sorrel-tree. sourwood. South Carolina, rock. sowing the seeds. sparrows, poisoning. Spartium junceum. spearmint. spider, red. spinach. Spiraea Aruncus. spireas. spraying. spring beauty. spruce. spuds. squash. squash insects. squill. stake labels. staphylea species. Statice latifolia. stem cuttings. Sterculia platanifolia. stevia. Stewart, quoted. stink-bug. St. John's wort. stocks. storing of fruits and vegetables. strawberry, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... be the Iroquois word for spruce. When Champlain's men were attacked by scurvy in the same neighborhood half a century later, the Iroquois no longer lived there, and this ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... you are become so well-dressed, Horatio; I wondered how you came to spruce up so!" interrupted ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... with whom he kills another hour discussing the merits of the different animals he meets with there. These important duties being done, he strolls to an exhibition, or to a print-shop, and looks over a portfolio of caricatures; thence he keeps on moving to a fashionable hotel, to take white spruce beer(!) and sandwiches; here, after arranging his parties for the evening, be returns home to dress. After looking over the cards which have been left for him, he proceeds to his toilette with his valet, and is dressed about seven, when his chariot is at the door, and he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... curious mingling of tenderness and admiration in the glance she bent upon him. He was a goodly youth to look at, tall and strongly knit in figure, upright as a young spruce fir, with a keen, dark-skinned face, square in outline and with a peculiar mobility of expression. The eyes were black and sparkling, and the thick, short, curling hair was sombre as the raven's wing. There was no lack of intellect ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... there, however, there were more than a thousand logs in the glut; and the ends stood up like a porcupine's quills, at every conceivable angle. The obstructing logs in the throat of the fall bore the pressure rather lengthwise than across the fibre. These sticks were of yellow spruce, fifty feet long, and fully three feet through. Such logs, when green, will bear an enormous strain. From the way the exposed ends sprang we knew they were buckling like steel rods, yet they ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... our empty casks, to fill water, and to cut down wood for fuel; all of which were absolutely necessary occupations. We also began to brew beer from the branches or leaves of a tree, which much resembles the American black- spruce. From the knowledge I had of this tree, and the similarity it bore to the spruce, I judged that, with the addition of inspissated juice of wort and molasses, it would make a very wholesome beer, and supply the want of vegetables, which this place did not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"—a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching in a neighboring church which was thus gloomily surrounded. He gave out as his text, "Why do the wicked live?" and as he peered in the dim light at his manuscript, he exclaimed abruptly, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... streamed fair and full on the wild heights of the island of Mount Desert. They entered a bay that stretched inland between iron-bound shores, and gave it the name of St. Sauveur. It is now called Frenchman's Bay. They saw a coast-line of weather-beaten crags set thick with spruce and fir, the surf-washed cliffs of Great Head and Schooner Head, the rocky front of Newport Mountain, patched with ragged woods, the arid domes of Dry Mountain and Green Mountain, the round bristly backs ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Crater Lake lay Happy Camp—so named because here was found the uppermost fringe of the timber line, where men might warm themselves by fire again. Scarcely could it be called timber, for it was a dwarf rock-spruce that never raised its loftiest branches higher than a foot above the moss, and that twisted and grovelled like a pig-vegetable under the moss. Here, on the trail leading into Happy Camp, in the first sunshine ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Every blessed brand of merchandise a man could bring to mind; There were things in crates and boxes, there was stuff in bags and bales, There were tea-chests wrapped in matting, there were Eastern-looking frails, There were baulks of teak and greenheart, there were stacks of spruce and pine, There was cork and frozen carcasses and casks of Spanish wine, There was rice and spice and cocoa-nuts, and rum enough was there For to warm all London's innards up and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... Dempsey and made a sign, whereupon the other withdrew, to presently return carrying a bowl of soup. The stranger drank it ravenously, and then lay back and closed his eyes once more. He would have been a clever man who could have recognized in the emaciated being upon the bed, the spruce, well-cared-for individual who was known to the Hotel of the Three Desires ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... cigarette-end away as he spoke. It fell on the railway line, and the tiny smoke from it curled up for a moment against the heavy background of spruce as ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... do was to place them on their ends against the conical framework of poles. In a few minutes we had a serviceable wigwam formed. As after our fatigues we were anxious to have comfortable couches, we cut down the tops of a number of small spruce firs, with which we covered the floor, using our knapsacks for pillows, and before long three of ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... although now I dare not drink, and so adieu. The boy replies, O Sir, however You'r very welcome, we do never Our Candles, Pipes or Fier grutch To daily customers and such, They'r Company (without expence,) For that's sufficient recompence. Here at a table all alone, Sits (studying) a spruce youngster, (one Who doth conceipt himself fully witty, And's counted one o' th' wits o' th' City,) Till by him (with a stately grace,) A Spanish Don himself doth place. Then (cap in hand) a brisk Monsieur ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... paddle or rude spade. The hoe was evolved from the stone pick or hatchet. It is said that the women of the North American tribes used a hoe made of an elk's shoulder-blade and a handle of wood. In Sweden the earliest records of tillage represent a huge hoe made from a stout limb of spruce with the sharpened root. This was finally made heavier, and men dragged it through the soil in the manner of ploughing. Subsequently the plough was made in two pieces, a handle having been added. Finally a pair of cows yoked together were compelled ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... weakness, and it's not easy to get the better of it. Each time I go to knock on the door, it is as if some one were holding back my hand. But courage, Antonius, is half the battle! There is no help for it, you must go on. I should spruce myself up a bit first, for they say Master Herman is getting finicky of late. (He takes off his neck-band and ties it on again, takes a comb from his pocket and combs his hair, and dusts his shoes.) Now, I think I will do. This is the moment to knock. See! as sure as I'm an honest ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... blew a gale, and Smoke Bellew staggered against it along the beach. In the gray of dawn a dozen boats were being loaded with the precious outfits packed across Chilkoot. They were clumsy, home-made boats, put together by men who were not boat-builders, out of planks they had sawed by hand from green spruce-trees. One boat, already loaded, was just starting, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... put on her kirk dress, and went to Largo to see Sophy. Her walk took her over a lonely stretch of country, though, as she left the coast, she came to a lovely land of meadows, with here and there waving plantations of young spruce or fir trees. Passing the entrance to one of these sheltered spots, she saw a servant driving leisurely back and forward a stylish dog-cart; and she had a sudden intuition that it belonged to Braelands. She looked ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... Old Bill ever saw was a fifty-pound cub that stole a string of trout from under Bill's nose, waded the creek and went away while Old Bill was throwing his gun into the brush and hitching frantically along a fallen spruce under the impression that he was climbing a tree. As for himself, he was getting too old and rheumatic to hunt, but he had had a little sport with bears in his time. He recalled with especial glee a little ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... word spoken from the chest," I sighed, just as Uncle Peter made his first cast and cleverly wound about eight feet of line around a spruce tree ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... and the Scotch pine are welcome additions to our own pine family. In these days of economic chemistry and a deficient rag supply, every reader of these words is probably in close proximity to an important spruce product—paper. The manufacturers say, with hand on heart, that they do not use much wood pulp, but when one has passed a great paper-mill flanked on all sides by piles of spruce logs, with no bales ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... right about her own house. Two coats of paint outside gave it a decidedly spruce appearance, while, inside, that lady's vision as to its capabilities had been more than realized. The blending of roughness and luxury, of camp and home characteristics, gave the large central apartment a quaintness that had real ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... wares, and a stump serves as a chopping-block. Under the shrubbery, where the sun cannot penetrate, are stored home-made firkins full of yellow butter, and great cheeses, and heaps of substantial home-baked bread. Kegs of hard cider and spruce beer and perhaps more potent brews are abroach, and behind the haggling and jesting and bustle you may catch the sound of muskets or the whoop of the Indians from afar. Meanwhile, in the settlements, all manner of industries were stimulated, and a great number of women throughout the country, left ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... the dark. Here again my work was taken, and liked so much that I was offered the basis (at twenty dollars a week) that I desired; I was even assigned to a desk where I should write in the office; and the next morning I came joyfully down to Spruce Street to occupy it. But I was met at the door by one of the editors, who said lightly, as if it were a trifling affair, "Well, we've concluded to waive the idea of an engagement," and once more my bright hopes of a basis dispersed themselves. I said, with what calm I could, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... done for you." So saying, he went to the side of the little maiden Musk-rat, and whispered certain words in her ear. When he had done this, he went to the forest near them, cut down a young pine-tree, dug up a root of the hemlock, took a spruce cone, an oak acorn, a hickery nut, and a birch-leaf, and laid them all in the fire which the Nanticoke had kindled. While they were burning, he walked round the fire muttering many words in an unknown tongue, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... even now. We were all crying like regular babies, and the eagles and flags were lowered as if at a funeral. And it was a funeral—the funeral of the Empire. His old soldiers, once so hale and spruce, were little more than skeletons. Standing on the portico of his ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... sign, and ran off, as far from the lodge as I could, and remained there until my mother came and found me out. She knew what was the matter, and brought me nearer to the family lodge, and bade me help her in making a small lodge of branches of the spruce tree. She told me to remain there, and keep away from every one, and as a diversion, to keep myself employed in chopping wood, and that she would bring me plenty of prepared bass-wood bark to twist into twine. She told me she would come to see me, in two days, and that in the mean time I must ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... flowers, this northern country is one of exceeding beauty. The dark green forests of spruce, larch and pine, broken now and then by a grove of poplars or silver birches, the secluded valleys and the rounded hills are strangely restful and give one a sense of infinite peace. It is a place to ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... day this—the Jubilee of man! London! right well thou know'st the day of prayer: Then thy spruce citizen, washed artisan, And smug apprentice gulp their weekly air: Thy coach of hackney, whiskey,[87] one-horse chair, And humblest gig through sundry suburbs whirl,[da] To Hampstead, Brentford, Harrow make repair; Till the tired jade the wheel forgets ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... and Norway spruce bordered the road, and, with the aid of a stone wall, shut off from the highway a prosperous-looking vegetable garden. Farther along, a flower garden glowed in the fantastic coloring which gardens acquire ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... a shout rent the air! The spruce widow affords the most excellent cheer; For comfort in quarters there's nothing can beat her, So up rose the lads with a welcome to greet her: The muse with true gallantry led her to place, And Truth said good humour was ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... now. Where would the west-bound limited be at that hour? He glanced at his watch, then flattened his nose against the window, until his eyes became accustomed to the starlight and he could watch the dim panorama of spruce trees and lonely little lakes sliding by in ceaseless procession. Presently he recognized a flag-station. His guess at Indian Creek as their whereabouts ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... of hops, and twice as much of the chippings of sassafras root, in ten gallons of water; strain it, and pour in, while hot, one gallon of molasses, two spoonsful of the essence of spruce, two spoonsful of powdered ginger, and one of pounded allspice; put it in a cask—when sufficiently cold, add half a pint of good yeast; stir it well, stop it close, and when fermented and clear, ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... have probably ensued, but it was prevented by the spruce toastmaster, who gave a sentiment, and turning to the two politicians, "Pray, gentlemen," said he, "let us have done with these musty politics: I would always leave them to the beer-suckers in Butcher Row. Come, let us have something of the fine arts. That was a damn'd hard ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... black silk. Your letter was a bomb of joy to me last evening.—I have taken heaps of your clothes to mend. What a rag-fair your closet was—and you did not tell me! Mrs. Alcott brought me some beer made of spruce only, and it was nice. Thou shalt have thy own beer, when you come home.—Bab went to see Mrs. Alcott, and I resumed weeding. At seven I heard thirteen cannon-shots, and did not understand it. Then I possessed The Wayside all ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... times the need of larger forest reserves and closer government supervision. Under the most favorable conditions, the pine requires from seventy-five to one hundred years to yield timber twenty-five feet in length and ten inches in diameter at the top. Spruce will reach the same size in seventy-five to eighty years. In the higher altitudes of the central part of the country the pine requires one hundred and fifty years, and rarely exceeds one hundred feet in height, and it decreases toward the ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... as far below the surface of the water as mountain peak and star are above it, is another mountain peak and bright star, twinned by the mirrored waters. See, away down the lake, that little island with its half dozen spruce trees, clustered together! How like a great war vessel it looks, with sails all set, as seen by the uncertain light of the moon. And that other island, off to the left, with the dead and barkless trees, how like a tall ship with bare masts riding at anchor ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... the fish went in thousands, was broad, deep, and rapid. Its banks were clothed with spruce-fir and dense underwood. There was little of the picturesque or the beautiful in the scenery. It was a bleak spot ...
— Fort Desolation - Red Indians and Fur Traders of Rupert's Land • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the Rainbow People, to work for the people of Ha-arts, the earth. He divided this creation into six parts, and each had its home in a spring in the heart of a great mountain upon whose summit was a giant tree. One was in the spruce tree on the Mountain of the North; another in the pine tree on the Mountain of the West; another in the oak tree on the Mountain of the South; and another in the aspen tree on the Mountain of the East; the fifth was on the ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... too, when we sat around a big camp-fire near our tents in the valley, and saw the full moon come up and look down upon us from behind Sentinel Rock, and heard the intermittent booming of Yosemite Falls sifting through the spruce trees that towered around us, and felt the tender, brooding spirit of the great valley, itself touched to lyric intensity by the grandeurs on every hand, steal in upon us, and possess our souls—surely that was a night none of us can ever forget. As Yosemite ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... rise the lake is revealed. Eagle Lake, or Pine Lake, or Spruce Lake, or Hidden Lake, or Granite Lake, or Sheltered Lake—any of these names would be appropriate. Almost circular in form—that is if you are not expected to be too rigidly exact in geometric terms—it is literally a jewel of lapis lazuli in a ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... day seems to me worth narrating. The brigade bivouacked on a large plantation, where was a colonial house of generous proportions. It fronted on a spacious lawn, which sloped from the house to the highway and was fringed with handsome old spruce and Austrian pines. In front and rear the house had broad porches. A wide hall ran through the center of the house from one porch to the other and on either side of the hall were well furnished rooms of ample size. In rear, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... wind might be rollicking and boisterous. Here it always went gently. Little, winding, fairy paths ran here and there over spruce roots cushioned with moss. Wild cherry trees, that in blossom time would be misty white, were scattered all over the valley, mingling with the dark spruces. A little brook with amber waters ran through it from the Glen village. The houses of the village were comfortably ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Will, his handsome face redder than any of the lively imageries she had called up to terrorize his conscience; "I got that front hair fascinater ye wanted, an' I sold the spruce gum for two dollars for ye. Look ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hills and mountains for forty miles, containing inexhaustible quantities of timber. We noticed tall cedar and oaks of every description; one kind more interesting than the others, being a white oak from twenty to forty feet in the body. Pine and spruce, with superior white ash and walnut, were found, and the most gigantic cotton-woods, particularly on the Sonoita. * * * * "The mountains in the neighborhood are filled with minerals, and the precious metals ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry
... of a man's breast as a horse cantered down a glade, under an ardent sky, amid blooms never seen since then. She was whisked back into that distant, unreal world by the figure of a young Romany standing beside a spruce-tree, and by her father's voice which uttered the startling words: "He says ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in warm weather. They chose a spot down in the canyon that was high, but still near the stream, and there built a log shanty to live in while they worked the claim. He wrote me how they cut the great spruce on the side of the mountain far above the chosen spot and rolled them in. Dad let them use his team of donkeys to pack in the necessary lumber and shingles for the 'shack.' Father came home, and Tad, with some hired help, erected the first log cabin in the canyon. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley |
