"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 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 ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... home in such good time that Kit had rubbed down the pony and made him as spruce as a race-horse, before Mr Garland came down to breakfast; which punctual and industrious conduct the old lady, and the old gentleman, and Mr Abel, highly extolled. At his usual hour (or rather at his usual minute and second, for he was the soul of punctuality) Mr Abel walked ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... in a great flutter, wished to start for Austin Friars instantly, but they waited nearly an hour, by John's advice, before they departed. Tom made himself as spruce as he could before leaving home, and when John Westlock, through the half-opened parlour door, had glimpses of that brave little sister brushing the collar of his coat in the passage, taking up loose stitches in his gloves and hovering ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... ready to produce The flying squirrel or the long-neck'd goose, Or dancing girls with hands together join'd, Or tall spruce-trees with wreaths of roses twin'd, The well-dress'd dolls whose paper form display'd, Thy penknife's ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... the fire, and began to stir in the different herbs. First she put in a little hop for the bitter. Mrs. Peterkin said it tasted like hop-tea, and not at all like coffee. Then she tried a little flag-root and snakeroot, then some spruce gum, and some caraway and some dill, some rue and rosemary, some sweet marjoram and sour, some oppermint and sappermint, a little spearmint and peppermint, some wild thyme, and some of the other tame time, some tansy and basil, and catnip and valerian, and sassafras, ginger, and pennyroyal. The ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... things!" she cried, jumping up to meet a pretty girl and a spruce young man, who had also jumped up. "George and Kitty ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... and purses, which take the fancy of the wealthier natives. Every fine day mats are spread before the doors and the tripang is put out to dry, as well as sugar, salt, biscuit, tea, cloths, and other things that get injured by an excessively moist atmosphere. In the morning and evening, spruce Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue trousers, white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is plaited till it reaches almost to their heels. An old Bugis hadji regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dignity of flowing green silk robe and gay turban, followed by two ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of an enormous spruce lay the dead body of a man. Standing silent above it they noted such particulars as first strike the attention—the face, the attitude, the clothing; whatever most promptly and plainly answers the unspoken ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person, who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined himself to a small ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... 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 ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... JILL runs to the window, but has no time to do more than adjust the curtains and spring over to stand by her father, before CHARLES comes in. Though in evening clothes, he is white and disheveled for so spruce a young mean.] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... trees stop at about 4,000 feet. There is one beech tree above Davos about 5,500 feet above the sea, but it has never succeeded in topping the huge boulder which shelters it from the North. The silver fir is healthy at 4,000 feet, but is seldom found much above that level, while the spruce or fir goes up to 7,000 feet and does best there. Larches seem to thrive best at about 5,000-6,000 feet, but may be seen almost as high as the top of the Bernina Pass on the south side facing Italy. The cembra pine, like a ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... comprehend how delightful our winter is,' said Sam Holt, noticing his companion's gradually glowing face. 'It has phases of the most bewitching beauty. Just look at this white spruce, at all times one of our loveliest trees, with branches feathering down to the ground, and every one of its innumerable sea-green leaves tipped with a spikelet which ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... were brought down together, and carried right into the garden, where the former was placed upon one of the flower-beds, and disappeared at once; the latter held up to a branch of the ornamental spruce, into which it ran, and then there was a scuffling noise, and Dexter ran away back to the stable, afraid to stop, lest the little ragged jacketed animal should leap back upon him, and make him more weak than ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... dragoon? Just look at him, with an old taffeta whigmaleerie tied to his back, like Paddy from Cork, with his coat buttoned behind! Isn't he a pretty figure, now, to go a-courting? You would never forsake the like of me—would you now? A spruce, natty little body of a creature—to be the trollop of a spindle-shanked veteran, who, besides having one foot in the grave, and a nose fit for three, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... rubbed with tarred lampblack, fine threads plaited together in strands, cotton soaked in boiling tar, lamp-wick, twine, tar and lampblack mixed with a proportion of lime, vulcanized fibre, celluloid, boxwood, cocoanut hair and shell, spruce, hickory, baywood, cedar and maple shavings, rosewood, punk, cork, bagging, flax, and a host of other things. He also extended his searches far into the realms of nature in the line of grasses, plants, canes, and similar ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and beautiful; the priest in his bright, silver chasuble, dotted with gilt crosses, the deacon, the chanters in holiday surplice of gold and silver, the spruce volunteer singers with oiled hair, the joyous melodies of holiday songs, the ceaseless blessing of the throng by the priests with flower-bedecked tern candles with the constantly repeated exclamations: "Christ has risen! Christ has risen!" Everything was beautiful, ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... house on Front Street below Spruce—as pleasant, cheerful a house as ever a trading captain could return to. At the back of the house a lawn sloped steeply down toward the river. To the south stood the wharf and storehouses; to the north an orchard and kitchen garden bloomed with abundant verdure. Two ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... gathered together at this spot, for, besides the officers in attendance to enforce the proclamation, there was a motley crowd of lookers-on of various degrees, who raised from time to time such shouts and cries as the circumstances called forth. A spruce young courtier was the first who approached: he unsheathed a weapon of burnished steel that shone and glistened in the sun, and handed it with the newest air to the officer, who, finding it exactly ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... last! At last! They rushed together, they stopped aghast. They 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 purred of pictures, Matisse, ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... a vest, at another a shawl, and at another a turban—I threw off my dress of a dervish, hastened to the bath, and after a few minutes under the barber, came out like a butterfly from its dark shell. No one would have recognised in the spruce young Turk, the filthy dervish. I hastened to Constantinople, where I lived gaily, and spent my money; but I found that to mix in the world, it is necessary not only to have an attaghan, but also to have ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... of pleasure, relief, was found also in the restful deadness of the wooded sides of the hills when he came near them. Grey there was of deciduous trees in the basin of the river, and dull green of spruce firs that grew up elsewhere. Intense light has the effect of lack of light, taking colour from the landscape. Even the green of the fir trees, as they stood in full light on the hill summits, was faded in comparison with ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... pudding, and coffee. After the voyage from Halifax it seemed good to rest a little with the firm earth under foot, and where the walls of one's habitation were still. Through the open windows came the fragrance of the spruce woods, and from the little piazza in front of the house you could look down and across Lake Melville, and away to the blue mountains beyond, where the snow was still lying in ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... notorious in the canyon that the only bear 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 incident of ten or a dozen years ago. He had been over on the Iron Fork ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... powers. In particular they can make good or bad weather. They produce rain by spilling water from a basket in the air; they make fine weather by shaking a small flat piece of wood attached to a stick by a string; they raise storms by strewing down on the ends of spruce branches. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the British intervention had been effectual. But it was not until the next morning, the second of his imprisonment, that the cell door opened once more, this time to admit the portly figure of John Weeks and the spruce person of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... and a new set of people fill the streets. The goods in the shop-windows are invitingly arranged; the shopmen in their white neckerchiefs and spruce coats, look as it they couldn't clean a window if their lives depended on it; the carts have disappeared from Covent-garden; the waggoners have returned, and the costermongers repaired to their ordinary 'beats' in the suburbs; clerks are at their offices, and gigs, cabs, omnibuses, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... peeresses and their daughters, &c. The simplest pew below belongs to the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, peers and their sons, or members of Parliament, &c. The Chapel Royal, like the State-rooms, is fresh and spruce from renewal. It has, however, wisely avoided all departure from the original character of the building, which has nothing but the carved roof and the great square window to distinguish it from any other chapel of the same size and style. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... before noon next day, and was over in little more than half an hour. Soames—pale, spruce, sad-eyed in the witness-box—had suffered so much beforehand that he took it all like one dead. The moment the decree nisi was pronounced he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... you went you had to climb, except east, where you might roll if you chose; in fact, you could hardly do otherwise. The first day of my hunt I started west. I climbed a hill devoted to pasture, passed through the bars, and faced my mountain. It presented a compact front of spruce-trees closely interlaced at the ground, and of course impassable. But a way opened in the midst, the path of a mountain brook, deserted now and dry. I sought an alpenstock. I abandoned all impedimenta. I started up that stony path escorted on each side by a close ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... fools! That makes six dead from the one cabin—six from eighteen, an' Promont'll make seven to-morrow. Do ye mind how we begged 'em to quit that dug-out an' build a white man's house, an' drink spruce tea, an' work! They're too —— lazy. They lie around in that hole, breath bad air, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... be entirely concealed by his person, so that, to all appearance, he seemed to be gliding away only attached to the horse by the reins in his well-guarded hands. The way led through noble woods of Scotch and Spruce fir, sometimes catching sight of a lofty mansion of stone, or passing a low thatched building of wood with numberless little sash windows, where some of the nobles still reside, and which are the remnants of more ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... to look at one transaction only, Mr Sloyd," he reminded the spruce but rather nervous young man. "It'll pay you to treat us reasonably. Mr Iver's a good friend to have and ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... came into my Lady Airy's about eight of the clock. You know the manner we sit at a visit, and I need not describe the circle; but Mr. Triplett came in, introduced by two tapers supported by a spruce servant, whose hair is under a cap till my lady's candles are all lighted up, and the hour ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... famous counsel, years ago, Was moving home at two, sedate and slow, Old, and fatigued with pleading at the bar, And grumbling that he lived away so far, When suddenly he chanced his eye to drop On a spruce personage in a barber's shop, Who in the shopman's absence lounged at ease, Paring his nails as calmly as you please. "Demetrius"—so was called the slave he kept To do his errands, a well-trained adept— "Find out about that man ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... The 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to civilization than the forests of the far north. Near the northern limit of the great evergreen forest of North America wild animals are so rare that a family of hunting Indians can scarcely find a living in a thousand square miles. Today the voracious maw of the daily newspaper is eating the spruce and hemlock by means of relentless saws and rattling pulp-mills. In the wake of the lumbermen settlers are tardily spreading northward from the more favored tracts in northern New England and southern Canada. Nevertheless ...
— The Red Man's Continent - A Chronicle of Aboriginal America, Volume 1 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Ellsworth Huntington
... fringed with the beautiful swamp-oak, a tree of the Casuarina family, with a form and character somewhat intermediate between that of the spruce and that of the Scotch fir, being less formal and Dutch-like than the former, and ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... gold chariot. He taught six green monkeys to draw it; they were harnessed with fine traces of flame-colored morocco leather. He went to another place, where he met with two monkeys of merit, the most pleasant of which was called Briscambril, the other Pierceforest—both very spruce and well educated. He dressed Briscambril like a king and placed him in the coach; Pierceforest he made the coachman; the others were dressed like pages; all which he put into his sack, coach ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... Their frame was of tall and strong saplings, planted in a double row to form the two sides of the house, bent till they met, and lashed together at the top. To these other poles were bound transversely, and the whole was covered with large sheets of the bark of the oak, elm, spruce, or white cedar, overlapping like the shingles of a roof, upon which, for their better security, split poles were made fast with cords of linden bark. At the crown of the arch, along the entire length of the house, an ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... a dull, foggy morning, with a drizzling mist. No matter; it was their wedding-day, thought Will, and no one could be more cheerful than he as he donned his becoming sailor suit and brushed his curly hair, and made himself look as spruce and neat as any jack-tar in the land. Rain and mist were nothing to this son of the briny ocean, the sunshine was in his heart, and he could scarcely believe in the wonderful good fortune which was to give him the brightest, the ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... signs were reversed and gates carried off and front stoops barricaded; even windows were broken in sport, the sport seeming to be chiefly in the adroitness with which one could parry suspicion. They had a house on Spruce Street, set in the midst of a considerable garden, while not a few respectable business men lived over their stores and offices. Polly Morris really grudged her sister-in-law the good fortune, for Hester had been left much worse off than she, but Hester had no incumbrances, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the trees turned yellow and red and brown and then began to drop, a few at first, then more and more every day until all but the spruce-trees and the pine-trees and the hemlock-trees and the fir-trees and the cedar-trees were bare. By this time most of Peter's feathered friends of the summer had departed, and there were days when Peter had oh, such a lonely feeling. The ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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, ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... for the most part unrecorded in official dispatches. I had seen them answering the call to mobilization, singing joyously as they marched through the streets. Then they were smart fellows, clean shaven and spruce in their new blue coats and scarlet trousers. Now war has put its dirt upon them and seems to have aged them by fifteen years, leaving its ineffaceable imprint upon their faces. Their blue coats have changed to a dusty gray, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... me as so singularly stimulating as to verge upon the riotous. The manner of playing was entirely new to me in the beginning. All conventions bind with a heavy chain, but none with a heavier than the Philadelphia variety. Spruce Street nights had never been so free and so vociferous and so late, and, being a good Philadelphian, I am not sure if the nights that succeeded have yet lost for me their novelty. As a consequence, if, in looking back, my days appear to be wholly monopolized by work, my nights seem consecrated ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... moved with him. He carried in his hand a spruce bough for defense against them. His hands were gloved, his face was covered with netting. But in spite of the best he could do they were an ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... things that she still watched. Now and then she made sure that she saw her father turn from the road into the lawn, but the figure, to her horror, would remain standing still in one place. It was simply a slender spruce which had seemed to start out of a corner of the night with a semblance of life. Now and then she actually did see a figure coming up the road, approaching the entrance to the lawn, and her heart leaped up with joy. She watched for it to enter, but that was the end. Whoever it ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... price of a week's 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 waistcoat! Oh, to miss the sight of her because I was wet through and bedraggled, ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... in among the men the smoke was creepin' out between the lids of the hatch. We ripped that off and began diggin' up the cargo—crates of chairs, rolls of mattin', some spruce scantling—runnin' the nozzle of the hose down as far as we could get it. There were no water-tight compartments which we could have flooded in those days as there are now, or we could have smothered it first off. What we had to do was to fight it inch by inch. I knew where the explosives ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... of him in that first encounter. He was crisp and quick in manner, clear-skinned, very spruce, and clear-eyed; his eyes appraised you in ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... roots; or yet others produce numerous seeds which are easily dispersed and may remain for a long time capable of germinating, as is the case with Calluna, Picea excelsa, and Pinus; or still other species, such as beech and spruce, have the power of enduring shade or even suppressing other species by the shade they cast. A number of species, such as Pteris aquilina, Acorus Calamus, Lemna minor, and Hypnum Schreberi, which are social, and ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... silvery mist from the spray of the falls floats here and there, spreading out in broad sheets over the damp earth, and gathering into filmy ropes and patches as the breeze catches it among the spruce, pine and maple trees above the edge of the falls. A short distance ahead the water glitters again where the river makes a slight turn and plunges over another precipice. It is like the flashing of distant shields. Overhead drift massed white clouds that enfold the valley ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... we breakfast the next morning on salmon-trout and wild strawberries. The town contains about six hundred inhabitants, and has a pleasant seat along the bay. Its principal industry seems to be lumber, or deals, which mean three-inch plank, in which shape most of the pine and spruce exported from the Dominion find their way to England. Here they also put up salmon and lobsters for the American market—America meaning the United States. Two steamers touch here weekly, and there is a daily mail and telegraphic communication with the outside world. A few tourists, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... church of St. Osoph—presbyterian down to its very foundations in bed-rock, thirty feet below the level of the avenue. It has a short, squat tower—and a low roof, and its narrow windows are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark spruce trees instead of elms, crows instead of blackbirds, and a gloomy minister with a shovel hat who lectures on philosophy on week-days at the university. He loves to think that his congregation are made of the lowly ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... ornamental conifers mention may be made of the beautiful Japanese Spruce Ajanensis, which grows freely in most soils and has dual-coloured leaves—dark green on the upper surface and silvery white underneath; this makes a grand single specimen anywhere. The White Spruce ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... from a full-grown errand-boy to a small clerk, Mr. Timmis, at the suggestion of my good friend Mr. Wallis, offered me, as a treat, a row in the boat they had engaged for the occasion; which, as a matter of course, I did not refuse: making myself as spruce as my limited wardrobe would permit, I trotted at their heels to the foot of London-bridge, the ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... preconceived dislike, I had to admit that the man was presentable. A big fellow he was, tall and dark, as Gertrude had said, smooth-shaven and erect, with prominent features and a square jaw. He was painfully spruce in his appearance, and his manner was almost ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... clear bracing air of the morning was delightful. The song-sparrows, perched at a safe distance, poured forth floods of melody, the Peabody bird added his high weird note, while other wild birds occasionally chimed in. The path led up through forests of black spruce whose sighing branches whispered softly over our heads. Every one was in excellent humor and had a capital story or a bit of geological scientific or botanical wisdom. The wild-flowers were scarcer than on Cardigan but there was greater variety of ferns. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... not know where to go; but he hopped and fluttered along with his broken wing. Presently the spruce-tree saw him, and said, "Where are you ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... 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 this was to be his home, ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... dull step in the whole distance. The Tennessee warbler was singing; but perhaps the pleasantest incident of the walk to the Profile House—in front of which the mountain footpath is taken—was a Blackburnian warbler perched, as usual, at the very top of a tall spruce, his orange throat flashing fire as he faced the sun, and his song, as my notebook expresses it, "sliding up to high Z at the end" in his quaintest and most characteristic fashion. I spent nearly three hours in climbing the mountain ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... stuffed his loot back into his pockets and came closer to the fire. Its warmth felt most comfortable, for the Spring night was growing chill. He looked about him at the motley company, some half-spruce in clothing that suggested a Kuppenmarx label and a not too far association with a tailor's goose, others in rags, all but one unshaven and all more or less dirty—for the open road is close to Nature, which ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 about a mile off. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... way," he observed incidentally, after they had conversed for some time, "there was a spruce young fellow here this morning asking very particularly about 999 and her movements. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... parted the rank grass in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... The spruce trees rustled amid their umbrageous boughs. The sob of the saxophone still came through the window. I saw Stella tremble through all her tall young body. A tear fell upon the floor and rebounded against ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... of late frosts is past. Northeast exposures are best as a general rule. Choose a slope away from the prevailing wind if possible. If this is impracticable it is often advisable to plant a wind break of pine, spruce, or a quick, thick growing native tree to protect the orchard ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... waving a branch of Christmas Tree. Soon there was a fine pow-wow going on. Cigars were exchanged for tobacco. Friendship was pledged in socks. The Germans brought out some beer and the English some rum. Finally, on Christmas Day, there was a great concert and dance. The Germans were spruce, elderly men, keen and well fed, with buttons cleaned for the occasion. They appeared to have plenty of supplies, and were fully equipped with everything necessary for a winter campaign. A third battalion, wisely but ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... on our way, the foppery of our charioteer reasserts itself. Of course, his neat and spruce trim has been considerably disarrayed, so now he proceeds to reorganize his appearance. Gravely and calmly he draws brushes and so on from a receptacle under the box-seat, and commences to titivate himself. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... all 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, knocked ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... and party-coloured inside waistcoats; sundry elderly ladies sat at card-tables, discussing the "lost honour by an odd trick they played," with heads as large as those of Jack or Jill in the pantomime; spruce clerks in public offices, (whose vocation the expansive tendency of the right ear, from long pen-carrying, betokened) discussed fashion, "and the musical glasses" to some very over-dressed married ladies, who preferred flirting to five-and-ten. The tea-table, over which the amiable ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... excepting the ones we had portaged. The cliffs, about 2500 feet high, of red sandstone, were often almost perpendicular on both sides, or at least they impressed us so at the time. There was much vegetation, pine, spruce, willow-leaved cottonwood, aspens, alder, etc., which added to the beauty and picturesqueness of the wild scenery. Beaman stopped each day where possible and desirable to take photographs, and at these times the others investigated the surroundings and climbed up side canyons when they existed. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... trees in Southern Michigan at an elevation of forty feet. In 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 found in ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various
... in desperate terror of my uncle at such times. They learned, notwithstanding their fright, that he trudged far and hard, at first smiling with the day, then muttering darkly, at last wrathfully swishing the spruce with his staff; but not one of them could follow to the discovery of the secret, whatever it might be, so that, though 'twas known the old man exchanged a genial humor for an execrable one, the why and wherefore were never ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... into 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, who was a farmer on the mainland, ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the catspaw out of the downhaul, and we began to boom-end the sail, it shook the ship to her centre. The boom buckled up and bent like a whip-stick, and we looked every moment to see something go; but, being of the short, tough upland spruce, it bent like whalebone, and nothing could break it. The carpenter said it was the best stick he had ever seen. The strength of all hands soon brought the tack to the boom-end, and the sheet was trimmed ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... He was no talker, but some thought that was no drawback in the married state. Abby remembered how Sister Lizzie's young husband had tormented her with foolish questions during the week he bad spent with them at the time of the marriage: a spruce young clerk from a city store, not knowing one end of a hoe from the other, and asking questions all the time, and not remembering anything you told him long enough for it to get inside his head; though there was room enough inside for consid'able many ideas, Abby thought. Yes, certainly, if ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... way to the store. It was dark by now, with stars in the sky and a breath of wind from the south and south-by-west. The folks were all in their cabins, save the skipper and Bill Brennen, who were digging the harbor's cache of jewelry from the head of a thicket of spruce-tuck. She let herself into the store and freed John Darling without striking a light. She placed the casket ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... Queen Dolores, saying: "I have studied mathematics. I will question this young man, in my tent to-night, and in the morning I will report the truth as to his claims. Are you content to endure this interrogatory, my spruce young fellow who wear ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... gale and I was going out on the lake alone, I picked up this stone to put in the bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little craft by bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then the secret was out, and there it was in a little dome of dried grass among some spruce roots ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... and spruce" Doctor of Laws, William Parry, who had been busying himself at about the same time with his memorable project against the Queen of England, proved as successful as Balthazar Gerard, the fate of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... spruce," he commented. "Can any one tell me why almost every maid I have met in my house this day turns and flees as though I were the plague? Sarah is the only one who doesn't shun me, and her mind appears to be taken up with affairs of State, for I ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Max," I declared. So I did, through the spruce woods and over the field as fast as my feet could carry me, thanking my stars that there was a Max to go to ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ghost, He is a most Incorrigible wanderer; And still to-day He takes his way About my hills of spruce and fir; ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... first up the hill, and heralded the sight of the camp with a cheer. "Now then, lively! Out with your jack-knives and off with a lot of spruce boughs!" ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... white pelican, long-billed curlew, lesser snow goose, Hudsonian curlew, sandhill crane, golden plover, woodcock, dowitcher and long-billed duck; spruce grouse, knot, prairie sharp-tailed grouse, marbled godwit and bald eagle. All these, formerly abundant, must now be called rare in Wisconsin.—(Prof. George E. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... corridor to the stairs, smiling to himself. Christmas at Spindrift was fun. The entire scientific staff and their families joined in, first in cutting their own trees from the stand of spruce at the back side of the island, then in decorating the big tree in the Brant library. On Christmas Eve there was a Yule log to be brought in and presents to be exchanged, although the Brants waited until morning to open their ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... 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 bell, keeping ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... couple of streets, we came to a humble but neat-looking dwelling house, with an apology for a garden in front. Tables and seats were arranged beneath some trees; "spruce beer" was advertised for sale, but there were indications that other kinds of refreshments could be obtained. The place wore a comfortable aspect. We nodded smilingly to each other, as much as to say, "This will do!" entered the gateway, which stood invitingly open, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... Rubicon to obstruct us, for the tide had risen a good deal, and the sands were covering. I offered again to take the sculls, but she took no notice and rowed on, so that I was a silent passenger on the stem seat till we reached her boat, a spruce little yacht's gig, built to the native model, with a spoon-bow and tiny lee-boards. It was already afloat, but riding quite safely to a rope and a little grapnel, which she proceeded to ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... hung from the ceiling and the little room exactly suited its mistress both were neat and clean, trim and spruce, simple and yet nice. Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered with ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brought it home, and were led to rest, the horses drooping their meek heads as they cooled their feet among the weed in the dark pond;—the ducks moving, with low contented quacks and quickly-wagging tails, in one long single file to their evening foraging in the dewy meadows; the spruce younger poultry pecking over the yard, staying up a little later than their elders to enjoy a few leavings in peace, free from the persecutions of the cross old king of the dung-hill;—all this left in ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one 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 ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... and without timber; the country is high and broken; a large portion of black rock and brown sandy rock appears in the face of the hills, the tops of which are covered with scattered pine, spruce, and dwarf cedar; the soil is generally poor, sandy near the tops of the hills, and nowhere producing much grass, the low grounds being covered with little else than the hyssop, or southernwood, and ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... think of our first Tree, in some way," said Polly softly, with glistening eyes, looking up at the beautiful branching spruce, its countless arms shaking out brilliant pendants, and gay with streamers and candles, wherever a decoration could be placed, the whole tipped with a shining star. "Oh, Bensie, can ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... in painful daylight, that he may return to the constant twilight preserved in that scene of wantonness, Messalina's bedchamber. How does he, while he is absent from thence, consider in his imagination the breadth of his porter's shoulders, the spruce nightcap of his valet, the ready attendance of his butler! Any of all whom he knows she admits, and professes to approve of. This, alas! is the gallantry; this the freedom of our fine gentlemen: for this they ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... sez he, "A Norway spruce, a willer, a sycamore, and a pine. Dum it all, what do they want to put on such names as them onto trees that grow right ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... unique as those of the scenery and natural values whose obliteration would be a heavy part of the reservoir's price. In 1965, the immense scenic value of a large part of the country it would wipe out was recognized by its inclusion in the big Spruce Knob-Seneca Rocks National Recreation Area. It is strongly to be hoped that ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... of the front step. A servant threw open the door of the breakfast room, and Delme mechanically entered it. It was filled with strangers; on some of these the spruce undertaker was fitting silk scarfs; while others were busy at the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... receive that day, she brightened up, shook the bonnet, pulled out the ribbons, and made it look as tidy as possible, thinking to herself that after buying some fuel she might possibly buy a bit of ribbon and make it look a little more spruce, when she got ...
— The Pearl Box - Containing One Hundred Beautiful Stories for Young People • "A Pastor"
... stretches. The looming walls made the valley look narrow, yet it must have been half a mile wide. The slopes under the cliffs were dotted with huge stones and cedar-trees. There were deep indentations in the walls, running back to form box canyon, choked with green of cedar and spruce and pinyon. These notches haunted Shefford, and he was ever on the lookout for more ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... asleep," said my uncle, shuffling across the room and unlocking another door on its opposite side. "He's never been here—never yet," he continued, pulling the door open. The dim light of the lantern shone out upon a thicket of fragrant spruce and cedar. As I stepped down upon the ground, following in the steps of my uncle, I could hear the murmur of the great pines towering far above our heads. Slowly we made our way through the dense undergrowth, and soon entered ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... fellow-countrymen—(Mr. Marble was observed by the chairman to bite his lips, to keep in a good round laugh, when those words, fellow-countrymen, came out)—I tell you what it is, the things that are wanted now are boots, and shoes, and stockings, and jackets—and not gingerbread, and sugar plums, and spruce beer, ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... Saturday, and passing away the time the best 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 could go away. ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... last having found the track, he went in hot haste after Mr. Rabbit. And both ran hard, till, night coming on, Rabbit, to protect himself, had only just time to trample down the snow a little, and stick up a spruce twig on end and sit on it. But when Wild Cat came up he found there a fine wigwam, and put his head in. All that he saw was an old man of very grave and dignified appearance, whose hair was gray, and whose majestic (sogmoye) appearance was heightened by a pair of long and venerable ears. And ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... she had attacked the under branches of the spruce and low pine trees, and soon had a good heap of these dead sticks near the tent. She turned over a flat stone that lay near by for a hearth. Before the other girls and Mrs. Havel were dressed and ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... at the Christmas season, and therefore an appropriate times for celebrating. He went down into the "wood-lot"—their own "wood-lot"—and cut a spruce tree, and set it up in the dining-room; they hung thereon all the contrivances which the associated grandparents had sent down to commemorate an occasion which was not only Christmas and house-warming, but the baby's third birthday as well. Because of the triple conjunction, they invested in ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the 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 men." He should therefore hear some delightful and rational conversation ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge this devoted town. To shops in crowds the dangled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach, Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... ask Mrs. Jardine, and obtained a few sidelights on Liosha's defensive methods. What they lacked in subtlety they made up in physical effectiveness. There were not many spruce young gentlemen who, after a week's residence in that establishment, did not adopt a peculiarly ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... and repelled him, as was witnessed by the fact that he frequently rose and closed the door, only to rise again directly and open it again. Each time he did this he peered all about the big room, whose windows were screened by wire netting as well as by a row of spruce trees. These trees were trimmed in a peculiar manner and were often commented upon by passers along the road beyond. All the lower branches, to the height of the window-tops, were left to grow, luxuriantly, as nature had designed. But above that the tall trees were shaven almost bare, ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... to see the fall—I don't know why," he said. "It's scarcely another mile, and I've been up almost that far with an Indian before. There's a ravine with young spruce in it where ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Tutor of St. Boniface: and two scholars came in. (He knew they were scholars, because this was his hour for seeing scholars.) One was a heavy-looking young man in a frock coat and tall hat. The other was a spruce youth, who looked as if nature had intended him for an attorney's clerk; as, indeed, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... the inside exhibit was a typical hunter camp. It was constructed of spruce logs and roofed with spruce bark from the ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... Jim Langdon stopped his horse where the spruce and balsam timber thinned out at the mouth of a coulee, looked ahead of him for a breathless moment or two, and then with an audible gasp of pleasure swung his right leg over so that his knee crooked restfully about the horn of ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... hard over the beds. Springy couches they made of spruce branches, covered with blankets, and, at last as care-free as a lot of Gypsies, they all slept as soundly as they had ever slept in their own beds ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel, too, for Miss Maylie's birds, with which Oliver, who had been studying the subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would decorate the cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were made all spruce and smart for the day, there was usually some little commission of charity to execute in the village; or, failing that, there was rare cricket-playing, sometimes, on the green; or, failing that, there was always something to do in the garden, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... and next he threw the saddle on and mounted. "I must be going back, or they will decide I am not coming till to-morrow, and quickly eat my supper." He spoke jauntily from his horse, arm akimbo, natty short jacket put on for to-day's courting, gray steeple-hat silver-embroidered, a spruce, pretty boy, not likely to toil severely at wood contracts so long as he could hold soul and body together and otherwise be merry, and the hand of that careless arm soft on his pistol, lest Don Ruz should abruptly dislike him too much; for Luis contrived ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... Andy, spruce and trim in a new suit, had sent on his trunk, and, with his valise in hand, bade his parents ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... FIR, SPRUCE," growled out Bruin, for he was gruff in his tongue, that he was. But for all that he only named two trees, for fir and Scotch fir are both ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... as solid and impenetrable as a rock. Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps of bushes that I have ever seen, as well, on account of the closeness and stubbornness of their branches as of their thorns, have been these wild-apple scrubs. They are more like the scrubby fir and black spruce on which you stand, and sometimes walk, on the tops of mountains, where cold is the demon they contend with, than anything else. No wonder they are prompted to grow thorns at last, to defend themselves against ...
— Wild Apples • Henry David Thoreau
... 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 ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the following pertinent fact. Shortly after my arrival in America, in the winter of 1907, the most active disseminator of socialistic literature in New York sent me, by way of a challenge, a new and very spruce volume, which contained the most important of his previous leaflets and articles, collected and republished, and claiming renewed attention. The first of these—and it was signalised by an accompanying advertisement as fundamental—bore the impressive title of, "Why ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock |
