"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a very becoming sense of his own position in society; two mild-spoken bookseller's clerks, who scarcely find their voices till the evening is far advanced; my friend and fellow-tramp the glovemaker; a spruce little model of a man, with the crispest hair, and the fullest and best trimmed moustache in the world, and who is no doubt a great man somewhere; a tremendous fellow of a student, who talks of cannon-boots, rapiers, and Berliner Weiss Bier; and an individual whose ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... a mile eastward. Deacon 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
... so the merry jingle of the silvery bells was heard while the cariole was still at some distance on the trail. Cordially were they welcomed, and strong arms speedily carried them into the cosy wigwam where, in the center, burned a great fire of dry spruce and birch wood. ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... white and beautiful. It lay unsullied on the village roofs, and, trampled but not yet soiled, in the village streets. The spruce trees on the lawn at Bannerhall were weighted with it, and on the lawn itself it rested, like an ermine blanket, soft and satisfying. Down the steps of the porch that stretched across the front of the mansion, a boy ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... 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
... bottom. Lay into this poles of four or five inches diameter at the butt, leaving an open passage between. Then lay in brush of any size, the coarsest at the bottom, filling the drain to within a foot of the surface, and covering with pine, or hemlock, or spruce boughs. Upon these lay turf, carefully cut, as close as possible. The brush should be laid but-end up stream, as it obstructs the water less in this way. Fill up with soil a foot above the surface, and tread it ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... of Firefly Lake, they took to a route that was new to them, leading through a heavy belt of spruce timber and then over a sloping stretch running down to the lowlands. On the way they stirred up some rabbits and Whopper could not resist the temptation to ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Olives, vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch, cypress, spruce, and cedar. The mountain range drops in altitude towards the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills, connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow Phoenician coast road, it rises in the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the 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 ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... commonly called "hard." Any wood that is not specially disposed to warp, and that can be smoothly wrought, may be used. Those you mention are all good; so are half a dozen more,—the different kinds of ash, yellow-pine, butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even hemlock and spruce in some situations. There are several important points to be religiously observed if you leave the wood, whatever the variety, in its unadorned beauty. It must be the best of its kind; it must be seasoned to its inmost fibre; it must be wrought skilfully, tenderly cared for, and, finally, filled ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... to take his way carefully, and thus his gait was reduced to little better than a walk. Further in, the tree-trunks gave way occasionally to patches of undergrowth. Then they became mixed with other growths. Maple and spruce held place and made her course more awkward, and further hindered her. The blue gums crowded so closely that frequently she was driven to considerable detour. Gradually the maze began to confuse her. She started ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... skin a pale (olive). In fact, she was as beautiful (as pen) or brush ever portrayed. The day he met her she wore a jacket of handsome (fir). He was of Irish descent, his name being (Willow) 'Flaherty. He was a (spruce) looking young fellow. Together they made a congenial (pear). But when did the course of true love ever run smooth? There was a third person to be considered. This was (paw paw). Both felt that, counting (paw paw) in, they might not be able ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... wild, damp, and shaggy look, the countless fallen and decaying trees are gone, and consequently that thick coat of moss which lived on them is gone too. The earth is comparatively bare and smooth and dry. The most primitive places left with us are the swamps, where the spruce still grows shaggy with usnea. The surface of the ground in the Maine woods is everywhere spongy and saturated with moisture. I noticed that the plants which cover the forest floor there are such as are commonly confined to swamps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... natural products of the country. There were tin mines, he found, in parts of the island, and iron in small quantities; but copper was imported from the Continent. The vegetation resembled that of France, save that he saw no beech and no spruce pine. Of more consequence were the people and the distribution of them. The Britons of the interior he conceived to be indigenous. The coast was chiefly occupied by immigrants from Belgium, as could ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... long, two feet four inches wide, and three inches in thickness. At the head, and at the foot, is to be screwed a notched two-inch board, three inches wide, as in Fig. 8. The mortises are to be one inch wide and deep, and one inch apart, to revive slats made of ash, oak, or spruce, one inch square, placed lengthwise of the couch. The slats being small, and so near together, and running lengthwise, make a better spring frame than wire coils. If they warp, they can be turned. They must not be fastened at the ends, except by insertion in the notches. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... read over a Greek play, and made out a problem or two in mechanics, without being the worse for it; but, somehow, I can't for the life of me hark back to the opinions that had such power over me at Oxford. I can't even recollect the half of them. It is as if that hemlock spruce had battered them out ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... do 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 ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... fair in the town the day I left Kronstadt. The field where it is held is right opposite Hotel "No. 1," and the whole place was crowded with country-folks in quaint costumes—spruce, gaily-dressed people mixed up with Wallack cattle-drivers and other picturesque rascals, such as gipsies and Jews, and here and there a Turk, and, more ragged than all, a sprinkling of refugee Bulgarians. ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... small room he seemed even bigger than I remembered him. He wore an old Norfolk jacket, and he had not shaved for several days. When last I saw him he was spruce enough, but he looked ill at ease: now, untidy and ill-kempt, he looked perfectly at home. I did not know how he would take the remark I ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... hair.] The great ones also generally, and spruce young men, do wear their hair long hanging down behind: but when they do any work or travail hard, it annoying them, they tie it up behind. Heretofore generally they bored holes in their ears and hung weights in them to make them grow long, like the Malabars, but this King ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Proudie is a good-looking man; spruce and dapper, and very tidy. He is somewhat below middle height, being about five feet four; but he makes up for the inches which he wants by the dignity with which he carries those which he has. It is no fault of his own if he has not a ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... "Here's yer grandpa's watch-fob, but I'm skeered fer you to wear it, you might lose it. It's a family remnant—been handed down two generations. What about this here red comforter? It would sorter spruce you up, an' keep you warm, besides; you know you 've had a cold fer a week, an' yer pipes is all stopped up." So it was decided, ...
— Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch • Alice Caldwell Hegan
... in this wilderness, a hillock of grass, descending into which you find a small chamber painted all round with a deep hedge of orchard and woodland plants, pomegranates, apples, arbutus, small pines and spruce firs, all most lovingly and knowingly given, with birds nesting and pecking, in brilliant enamel like encaustic on ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... cathedrals without feeling that the forest overpowered the mind of the builder, and that his chisel, his saw and plane, still reproduced its ferns, its spikes of flowers, its locust, elm, pine, and spruce." ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... imprint. And see! there is where the moss slipped and broke beneath his weight. A restless tramp is Mooween, who scatters his records over forty miles of hillside on a summer day, when his lazy mood happens to leave him for a season. Here, on the other side, are the bronze-green petals of a spruce cone, chips from a squirrel's workshop, scattered as if Meeko had brushed them hastily from his yellow apron when he rushed out to see Mooween as he passed. There, beyond, is a mink sign, plain as daylight, where Cheokhes sat ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... is time the reader should be introduced, lay bathed in the ruddy glow of the setting sun, whose rays tinged the branches of the groves of aspen, birch, poplar, and spruce, which could be seen at some distance away, both to the east and west. It stood on the top of some high ground, rising abruptly from the margin of a stream flowing by on ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... 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
... with a smile, whose amusement presently softened to an expression that would have amazed his business cronies. Later on he hummed the air of an old love song as he climbed the steep spruce road to Tom's. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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
... to goodness you'd keep your goods in better order. In front of your store, on sidewalk and gutter, are old fruits, potatoes, and sundry other things too old to be quite nice. So spruce things up, and you will be surprised ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... Haydon house stood on high rising land, with two great walnut-trees at one side, and a tall, thin, black-looking spruce in front that had lost its mate. A comfortable row of round-headed old apple-trees led all the way up a long lane from the main road. This lane and the spacious side yard were scarred by wheel ruts, and the fresh turf ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... great old lumbering piece of ordnance came slowly, dragged by a magnificent team of horses, into the fortress. Nothing could be more striking than the contrast presented by this huge, clumsy, misshapen, obsolete engine of war, and the spruce, trim, shining, comparatively little cannon (mere pocket-pistols for Bellona) which furnished the battery just below our stand, and which, as soon as the unwieldy old warrioress had occupied the post of honor ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the river. It is enough to give him inflammation of the lungs. If Bergenheim were to see him sweating and panting like this in this bleak wind, he would give me a sound blowing-up. Upon my word, it is becoming comical! There are no more young girls! I shall see her appear presently as spruce and conceited as if she had been playing the finest trick in the world. It will do for once; but if we sojourn in these quarters some time yet, she must be educated and taught to say, 'If you please' and 'Thanks.' ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... 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
... the Blue Mesa lay in a wide level of grassland, round which the spruce of the high country swept in a great, blue-edged circle. To the west the barren peak of Mount Baldy maintained a solitary vigil in sunshine and tempest. Away to the north the timbered plateaus dropped from level to level like a gigantic stair until they merged with ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... the three jumped on board. This was the pilot, a slave, as I knew; and I remember the time, when, in my innocence, I would have expected to see something very squalid and miserable, but there was nothing of the kind; for I never in my life saw a more spruce saltwater dandy, in a small way. He was well dressed, according to a seaman's notion—clean white trowsers, check shirt, with white lapels, neatly fastened at the throat with a black ribbon, smart straw hat; and altogether he carried an appearance of comfort—I was going to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... that I see down in the Place there, at that corner—the old gentleman in nankeen, with the green shade over his eyes, and the fat little dame by his side; and those young ladies at the door of the large hotel opposite, and the spruce militaire there at the window, and that knot of men in long brown surtouts, one of whom is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... be my death"—we still hear the note of selfishness, but with harmonic overtones that change its quality, the result of a change in the way of regarding women. Where women are looked down on as inferiors, as among the ancients, amorous hyperbole cannot be sincere; it is either nothing but "spruce affectation" or else an illustration of the power of sensual love. No ancient author could have written what Emerson wrote in his essay on Love, of the ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... 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 ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... whole divan, 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 amain!" ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... of four was approaching, comprised of a spruce, dress-coated manager; a short thick-set, broad-faced man who was doubtless the long-overdue detective; a professional-appearing gentleman with a black bag, obviously the house-physician; and the policeman that I had summoned ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... strange unrest. The sight of Harriet Penny irritated her. She stepped from the tent and filled her lungs with great drafts of the spruce-laden night-breeze that wafted gently out of the mysterious dark, and rippled the surface of the river until little waves slapped softly against the shore in tiny whisperings of the unknown—whisperings that called, and were ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... and spruce company (for every man had donned his best, and dressed himself with the utmost care) came Caron La Boulaye. He walked alone, for although their comrade in death, he was their comrade in nothing else. Their heads might lie together in the sawdust of Sanson's ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... 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 ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... it as the twilight of the day was dissolving into the deeper dusk of the night, and put up his tent in the shelter of a clump of gnarled and storm-beaten spruce. Then he gathered wood and built himself a fire. He did not count the sticks as he had counted them for eighteen months. He was wasteful, prodigal. He had traveled forty miles since morning but he felt no exhaustion. He gathered wood until he had a great ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... turn its dripping wheel and cut up a few pine-logs into fragrant boards. There is a big steam-mill a little farther up the river, which rips out thousands of feet of lumber in a day; but there are no more pine-logs, only sticks of spruce which the old lumbermen would have thought hardly worth cutting. And down below the dam there is a pulp-mill, to chew up the little trees and turn them into paper, and a chair factory, and two or three industrial establishments, with quite a little colony of French-Canadians employed in ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... rock under a friendly dwarf spruce they lay still as two rabbits, watching with round eyes, eager but unafraid, the antics of three brown wolf cubs that were chasing the flies and tumbling over some invisible plaything before the door of ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... fallen, on the watry fields; And Nature to the waste dominion yields, Stript her last robes, with gold and purple gay.— So droops my life, of your soft beams despoil'd, Youth, Health, and Hope, that long exulting smil'd; And the wild carols, and the bloomy hues Of merry Spring-time, spruce on every plain Her half-blown bushes, moist with sunny rain, More pensive thoughts in my sunk heart infuse Than Winter's grey, and desolate domain, Faded, like my lost Youth, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... constructing a vessel to serve them in the event of any accident happening to the Britannia. This they had nearly completed when Mr. Raven arrived. She was calculated to measure about sixty-five tons, and was chiefly built of the spruce fir, which Mr. Raven stated to be the fittest wood he had observed there for ship-building, and which might be procured in any quantity or of any size. The carpenter of the Britannia, an ingenious man, and master of his profession, compared ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... abated greatly, and small, infrequent snowflakes came drifting by. Snow also spread more abundantly below, and the only trees were clumps of pine and spruce in the lower valleys. Kurt went with three men into the still intact gas-chambers, let out a certain quantity of gas from them, and prepared a series of ripping panels for the descent. Also the residue of the bombs and explosives in the magazine were thrown overboard and fell, detonating loudly, ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... until they came to a growth of spruce so dense that it formed a shelter from both snow and wind, with a thick carpet of brown needles under foot. They were shut out from the stars, and in the darkness MacVeigh began to whistle cheerfully. He unstrapped his pack and spread out one of his blankets close to the box and ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... edge of the icy mass, in a sort of semicircular row; and so as to enclose a small space in front of the aperture. To hold the stakes all the more firmly, large stones were piled up against them, and the uprights themselves were closely wattled together by the broad flat branches of the spruce pines that grew near. In this way was constructed a fence that a cat could not have crawled through, much less a bear. One aperture only was left in it, and that was directly in front—a hole at about the height of a man's knee from the ground, ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... 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
... sat up to find the room full of sunshine and Spike standing beside him, a bright-faced, merry-eyed Spike, very spruce ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... we found her spruce and prim with her best black silk bonnet, something in shape like a coal-scuttle, her stick in her hand, and her shoes on her feet. We drove up the chair in fine style. There were several cottages close by, and the neighbors came out to see the old lady ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... ropes. The drawn saber, too, never consorted well with the dirty outside woolen wrapper which generally hung loose from the man's neck. Heaven knows, I did not begrudge him his comforter in that cold weather, or even his long, uncombed shock of hair; but I think he might have been made more spruce, and I am sure that he could not have looked more uncomfortable. As I went, however, I felt for him a sort of affection, and wished in my heart of hearts that he might soon be enabled to return to some ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... sky generally serene. The soil is not favourable to any of the European kinds of grain; but produces great plenty of maize, which the people bake into bread, and brew into beer, though their favourite drink is made of molasses hopped, and impregnated with the tops of the spruce-fir, which is a native of this country. The ground raises good flax and tolerable hemp. Here are great herds of black cattle, some of them very large in size, a vast number of excellent hogs, a breed of small horses, graceful, swift, and hardy; and large flocks of sheep, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... its steps. But all who have time should go prepared to camp awhile on the riverbank, to rest and learn something about the plants and animals and the mighty flood roaring past. In cool, shady amphitheaters at the head of the trail there are groves of white silver fir and Douglas spruce, with ferns and saxifrages that recall snowy mountains; below these, yellow pine, nut-pine, juniper, hop-hornbeam, ash, maple, holly-leaved berberis, cowania, spiraea, dwarf oak, and other small shrubs and trees. In dry gulches and on taluses and sun-beaten ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... make to your superiors, why, write her out, and I'll send a vaquero with it to Oakville this afternoon, and it'll go north on the stage to-morrow. But, lieutenant, you mustn't think you can ride right past Las Palomas when you're not under emergency orders. Now, fall off those horses and spruce up a little, for I intend to introduce you to some as nice girls as you ever met. You may want to quit rangering some day, and I may need a man about your size, and I'm ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... into wagon sheds and slept upon loads of grain or produce that had been gotten ready for the morrow's marketing. More frequently they bivouacked in the open, under the blue canopy of heaven, merely sheltered a little by a friendly spruce or pine, with the silver moon for a lamp, and the bright stars for candles. The great shaggy beast and the little dark man slept in one bed, as it were. Pedro usually pillowed his head upon Black Bruin and so the bear had to lie very still and ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the bark carefully away from the hindquarters of a spruce tree and remove the tenderloin. One of last year's Christmas trees is excellent for the purpose. Chop it up fine and place in a saucepan. Add boiling water and let it simper two hours. Season with a pinch of salt, and if this is not satisfactory, you might also pinch a little ...
— The Silly Syclopedia • Noah Lott
... was, and imperfectly educated, he aspired to be a lawyer; and at eighteen years of age he became a law-student in the office of Mr. Spruce McCay in Salisbury, North Carolina. Two years later, in 1787, he was admitted to the bar. Not making much headway in Salisbury, he wandered to that part of the State which is now Tennessee, then an almost unbroken wilderness, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... we all know, and she really looked quite spruce; so much so, that when she flew home, the new wife nearly burst with envy, and asked her at once where she had found such a ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... 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 go for tired nerves. Ragged peaks, towering ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... him in that first encounter. He was crisp and quick in manner, clear-skinned, very spruce, and clear-eyed; his eyes appraised ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... advice, they got the weapons up and mounted them, so that, in the event of the vessel being searched by the Spanish authorities, there should be nothing in the nature of concealed weapons on board to afford an excuse for the making of trouble. Thus, by the end of the afternoon watch the yacht was again spruce and clean as a new pin, and made a very brave show with her brand-new, silver-bright guns grinning threateningly out over the rail, and the two Maxims all ready for action on the top of the deck-house. Her appearance said, as plainly as ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... on the next night the west wind cautioned them. But this third warning was equally futile. On the fourth night came the south wind. It breathed into Suha's ear that he alone had been good and should be saved, and bade him make a hollow ball of spruce gum in which he might float while the deluge lasted. Suha and his wife immediately set out to gather the gum, that they melted and shaped until they had made a large, rounded ark, which they ballasted with jars of nuts, acorn-meal and water, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... one of our passengers observed, like a party of returned Californians. Their line was uneven, their wheeling excessively loose, their evolutions of the simplest and yet awkwardly executed. Evidently they were newly embodied, and from the country; for the Charleston companies are spruce in appearance and well drilled. Half a dozen of them, who had been on sentinel duty during the night, discharged their guns in the air,—a daily process, rendered necessary by the moist atmosphere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... back quickly a dozen steps, and they hid behind a giant spruce to watch. The scene that followed was like the holiday spectacle in a London Terminus, except that the passengers had no luggage. The other difference was that they seemed intent upon some purpose not wholly for their own advantage. It seemed, too, they had expected somebody to meet them, ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... the edge of the road, with her hair flying, and her hat hanging by its ribbons. She chased a rabbit, and squirrels, and picked certain green branches, and managed to get her hands and the front of her dress all "stuck up" with spruce gum in trying to get a piece ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, as it were, too peregrinate, as I may call it...He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." —Love's Labor's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... 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, they grew ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... 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
... was a stout, angry-looking person of middle age, very dark, and very full about the lower part of the face, which was not concealed by the closely cut black beard. His companion was a diminutive little man, very thin and very spruce, not less than fifty years old. His face was entirely shaved and was deeply marked with lines and furrows. A pair of piercing grey eyes looked through big gold-rimmed spectacles. As he took off his hat, a few thin, ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... the house and barn, in most cases the two buildings touching at some point,—an arrangement doubtless prompted by the deep snows and severe cold of this latitude. The typical Canadian dwelling-house is also presently met with on entering the Dominion,—a low, modest structure of hewn spruce logs, with a steep roof (containing two or more dormer windows) that ends in a smart curve, a hint taken from the Chinese pagoda. Even in the more costly brick or stone houses in the towns and vicinity this style is adhered to. It is so universal that ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... surviving its builders like the marble temples of Greece—columns three hundred feet high and thirty feet through at the base. Such a vast nave, such majestic aisles, such sublime spires, only the forest cathedrals know. Symmetrical silver firs, giant cedars and spruce, grow side by side with sugar pines of vast and irregular outline, whose huge branches, like outstretched arms, hold aloft the splendid cones—such is ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... copper lamp 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 good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... straight and square-shouldered and brown. Military training and life at Camp Devens had wrought the miracle in his case which it works in so many. Jed found it hard to recognize the stoop-shouldered son of the hardware dealer in the spruce young soldier before him. When he complimented Leander upon the improvement the latter disclaimed ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... him, 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 palace, he ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... off worst were dirty boys: no mercy was shown them. One such we can recall—now a very spruce, well-appointed government official—whose obstinate adherence to dirt was marvelous, seeing what it ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... crust had formed upon the snow—a crust that was just strong enough to support Dickie's weight. And he made swiftly for the spruce woods, to hunt for his supper, for he knew he could find nothing on the ground, covered as it was by ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... this day and till the middle of the next forenoon, concealing the landscape almost entirely; but we had hardly got out of the streets of Bangor before I began to be exhilarated by the sight of the wild fir and spruce tops, and those of other primitive evergreens, peering through the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight and odor of cake to a schoolboy. He who rides and keeps the beaten track studies the fences chiefly. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of us worked our way leisurely through the crowd toward the side-street down which Anazeh had led his party. We found them looking very spruce and savage, four abreast, drawn up in the throat of an alley, old Anazeh sitting his horse at their head like a symbol of the ancient order waiting to assault the new. My horse was close beside him, held by ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... Ned Parker was able to get out of doors again, he was heard of in every house in the village, making himself agreeable after his own fashion,—drinking hard cider with the old farmers, praising their wives' gingerbread and spruce-beer, holding skeins for the girls, going on picnics, huckleberryings, fishing-excursions, apple-bees, riding Old Boker, his father's horse, bare-backed down the street, playing ball on the green, and frequenting singing-school with one pretty girl and another, till all Deerfield shook ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the words, 'Beg your pardon,' they stepped out with a little amusement in their eyes, when a spruce young woman sprang up from the opposite ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress's glass of port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had appeared even then to the man she already hoped he ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... common. Rare on Vancouver Island. Brooks says common resident in the spruce zone on the ...
— Catalogue of British Columbia Birds • Francis Kermode
... lie Where day never shuts his eye, Up in the broad fields of the sky. There I suck the liquid air, All amidst the gardens fair Of Hesperus, and his daughters three That sing about the golden tree. Along the crisped shades and bowers Revels the spruce and jocund Spring; The Graces and the rosy-bosomed Hours Thither all their bounties bring. There eternal Summer dwells; And west winds with musky wing About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Iris there with ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... round the hotel crazy with excitement. But not a word would the proprietor say. Great dray loads of square timber, and two-by-eight pine joists kept arriving from the planing mill. There was a pile of matched spruce sixteen feet high lying by ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... exudes from the spruce-fir, and is used by some polishers in the making of polishes ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... Memoranda:—"29th May, 1819. The frost was so severe that the verdure around White Mead, and throughout all the low parts of the Forest, was entirely destroyed. There was not a green leaf left on any oak or beech, large or small, and all the shoots of the year were altogether withered. The spruce and silver firs were all injured: in short all trees but Scotch fir and poplar suffered severely.—August 10th. The plantations had recovered from the effects of the frost—the oak more effectually than the beech, and had made more vigorous and thriving ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls
... but they did not turn aside. "I think I'm going there with some one else," she said softly, and before her vision of this eager lover there popped a spruce picture of Uncle Alfred. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... 380 natives, officered by eleven or twelve Englishmen. To Colonel Colin Harding, C.M.G., was due the credit of recruiting and drilling this smart corps, and it was difficult to believe that these soldierly-looking men, very spruce in their dark blue tunics and caps, from which depend enormous red tassels, were only a short time ago idling away their ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... with adobe, the material from which the chimney, which entirely occupied one gable, was built. It was pierced with two windows and a door, roofed with smaller logs, and thatched with long half cylinders of spruce bark. But the interior gave certain indications of the distinction as well as the peculiar experiences of its occupant. In place of the usual bunk or berth built against the wall stood a small folding camp bedstead, and upon a rude deal table that held a tin wash-basin ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock, spruce or arbor vitae in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course. Some of our northern Indians eat raw ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... living-room, and, in spite of my 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 ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... flowers, and virgin soil. In the center was a beautiful lake, its ice cold water well stocked with the finny tribe of speckled mountain trout, the delight of the angler. The park was inclosed by mountains of great height and grandeur, their rocky slopes were dotted with spruce, pine, and cottonwood, and capped with ages of crystal snow, presenting a sight more pleasing to the eye than the Falls of Niagara, and a perfect haven for ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... between making waistcoats and trousers for the tailors and binding shoes for the shoemakers, a business that she thoroughly understood, she soon had her little hired room neatly furnished, and her grandfather as clean and spruce as ever. When she led him into the kirk of a Sabbath morning, all the neighbours greeted the dutiful daughter with an approving smile, and the old man looked so serene and happy that Jeanie was fully repaid for her labours ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... 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
... streets are as untidy as the houses; garbage is dumped in the unfinished roadways; and in or out of your hotel you will seek comfort in vain. The citizens of Chicago themselves are far too busy to think whether their city is spruce or untidy. Money is their quest, and it matters not in what circumstances they pursue it. The avid type is universal and insistent. The energy of New York is said to be mere leisure compared to the hustling of Chicago. ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the coolness of the twilight gave him the sense of being a better man than he knew himself to be. Ebie went to sit under the ministrations of the Reverend Erasmus Teends at twelve by the clock on Sunday. He was a regular attendant. He always was spruce in his Sunday blacks. He placed himself in the hard pews so that he could have a view of his flame for the time being. As he listened to the minister he thought sometimes of her and of his work, and of the turnip-hoeing on the morrow, but oftenest of Jess, who went to the ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the scent of vinegar, into the long, unfloored room, which certainly needed something of the kind. It reeked with stale tobacco-smoke, the smell of cookery, and the odors of frowsy clothes. A row of bunks, filled with spruce twigs and old brown blankets, ran down one side of it, a very rude table down the other, and a double row of men with bronzed faces, in dusty garments, sat about the latter, eating voraciously. Fifteen minutes was, at the outside, the longest time ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... Park, is a beautiful public park on one of the wooded islands near Stockholm. There one finds forests of gigantic oaks, dense groves of spruce, smiling meadows, winding roads and shady paths. Through the tree-branches one catches a glimpse of the blue waters of the fjord, rippling and sparkling in the sun; little steamers go puffing briskly to and fro; and great vessels sail ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... the bay opposite the creek, the water was as smooth as glass, undisturbed by the slightest breath of wind so as to cause a ripple; and numbers of baby puffins and young penguins, their spruce little downy bodies clad in bright new coats of silky feathers, were scattered in groups over the mirror-like expanse, diving and coming up again in a moment in the centre of a series of expanding circles that gradually grew wider and wider in diameter, ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... upon the ground. He generally wore an old linen duster, a black slouch hat, and a pair of light blue pants thrust into the tops of heavy boots which were seldom blacked, but often splashed with Cairo mud. But everybody stepped respectfully aside to let him pass, and the spruce young staff officers never failed to salute. It ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... 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 about their restoration ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... fair 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 birthplace mentioned on his certificate ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... the 'Grand Turk' was a spruce young negro, who aired his importance with balmy complacency, and was greatly courted by the circle in which he moved. The young colored population of New Orleans were much given to flirting, at twilight, on the banquettes of the back streets. Somebody ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I said, panting from my exertions, and surveying my friend, who was a mockery of his ordinarily spruce self. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... occupied by swamps filled with a thick growth of cedars. Deep and small basins occur, which are occupied by lakes that give rise to rivers flowing to the St. Lawrence or to the St. John. These are intermingled with thickets of dwarf spruce, and the streams are sometimes bordered by marshes covered by low alders, and sometimes cut deep into rocky channels. In this apparent labyrinth one positive circumstance marks the line of division, or the true height of land: The streams which run to the St. John are all of the first description—sluggish—while ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... 1884, at 8 P.M., the Commission met at the house of the Provost, 1811 Spruce Street, for the purpose of sealing a slate to be left with the Medium, Mrs. Patterson, who was to try to procure independent writing upon the inside surfaces. There were present Dr. Pepper, Mr. Furness, Professor Thompson and Mr. Fullerton. Mr. Furness brought the slate and ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... gap opened and Tartarin could see the harbour mouth and the movement of ships. An English frigate leaving for Malta, spruce and scrubbed, with officers in yellow gloves, or a big Marseilles brig, casting off amid shouting and cursing, with, in the bows, a fat captain in an overcoat and a top hat, supervising the manoeuvre in broad provencal. There were ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... wild-looking thickets at the back of the pasture. But no sooner had he fairly entered these thickets than he found his further progress barred by the steel-meshed fence. This was a bitter disappointment, for he had expected to go striding through miles of alder swamp and dark spruce woods, fleeing the hated world of men and bondage, before setting himself to get acquainted with his new followers. His high-strung temper was badly jarred. He drew off, shaking his vast antlers, and went shambling with spacious stride down along the barrier towards the ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... 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 Christendom would have been still darker. Fortunately, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... himself zealously in it ever after; and, as another opportunity may not occur for mentioning the circumstance, we will add that he kept to his resolution, and ultimately rose to high offices in the city. Dick's appearance had already considerably improved. His apparel was spruce and neat, but not showy, and well became him; while his deportment, even under the blissful circumstances in which he was placed, had a sobriety and decorum about it really surprising, and which argued well for his ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... out a keg from beneath a cover of leaves, toward the close of the repast, and addressing the stranger who sat at his elbow, doing great justice to his culinary skill, "try a little spruce; 'twill wash away all thoughts of the colt, and quicken the life in your bosom. I drink to our better friendship, hoping that a little horse-flesh may leave no heart-burnings atween us. How ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... got back to the Quadrangle there was a shifting mass about the polls. Encina politicians were there, Palo Alto politicians, serious-looking fellows from the Camp, and spruce ones from the Row. Castleton's followers stood in groups, looking smug and confident, while sour-faced Higgins people were revengefully putting in ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... basket filled with water, which they spill into the air. For making clear weather, they use a small stick to the end of which a string is tied. A small flat piece of wood is attached to the end of the string, and this implement is shaken. Storm is produced by strewing down on the ends of spruce branches" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to a little grove about a mile from my house, to see the grave of a beautiful little child, that was buried on the summit of a little hill, covered with pines, spruce ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... 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)
... one may find also the birch and the beech, the linden, sycamore, chestnut, poplar, hemlock-spruce, butternut, and maple overhanging such pleasant undergrowths as the hornbeam and hop-hornbeam, willows, black-cherry and choke-cherry, dogwood and other cornels, several viburnums, bush maples of two or three kinds, alder, elder, sumach, hazel, witch-hazel, the shadblow and other perennial, ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... their place as aboriginal trees of the country, or of at least the more northerly provinces of the continent. The common Scotch fir, the common birch, and a continental species of conifer of the far north, the Norwegian spruce (Abies excelsa), have been found underlying the Pleistocene drift, and rooted in the mammiferous crag; and for many ages must the old extinct elephant have roamed amid these familiar trees. From one limited tract of sea bottom ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller |
