"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... impotently, the spruce logs followed one another round and round the circuit of the great stone pot. The circling water within the pot was smooth and deep and black, but streaked with foam. At one side a gash in the rocky rim ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... that was like a story for interest, and there was a bush that bore a secret worth the telling. Even Simeon Holly glowed into a semblance of life when David had unerringly picked out and called by name the spruce, and fir, and pine, and larch, and then, in answer to Mrs. Holly's murmured: "But, David, where's the difference? They look so much alike!" ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... would be at least three inches long when full grown, and would have a queer habit of rearing and drawing leaves to their mouths when feeding. I was told I would find them in August, on leaves of spruce, pine, cherry, birch, alder, sycamore, elm, or maple; that they pupated in the ground; and the moths were common, especially around lights in city parks, and ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... the most remarkable company that ever was seen proceeded down the Via Ripetta towards the Porta del Popolo. All eyes were turned upon them, and people asked each other if these were maskers left from the Carnival. Signor Pasquale Capuzzi, spruce and smug, all elegance and politeness, wearing his gay Spanish suit well brushed, parading a new yellow feather in his conical hat, and stepping along in shoes too little for him, as if he were walking amongst eggs, was leading pretty Marianna ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Spenser is published with prints, designed by Kent; but the most execrable performance you ever beheld. The graving not worse than the drawing; awkward knights, scrambling Unas, hills tumbling down themselves, no variety Of prospect and three or four perpetual spruce firs. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... our soles; There is water a-swash in our boots; Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles, And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes; We gather our herds at the head, Where the axes have toppled them loose, And down from the hills where the rivers are fed We harry the hemlock and spruce. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... There was about a foot of snow on the ground and they scraped bare a place for their camp-fire beside a big stump and gathered enough fuel from windfalls for the night. Then they rolled a log beside the fire for a seat and built a soft bed with fragrant branches of hemlock and spruce. They roasted the chicken over a thick bed of glowing coals and baked potatoes in the ashes of the fire. The chicken was carved with their pocket knives and they got along without forks or plates. ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... sidewalks opposite each other in the two tunnels. A temporary platform was laid on the bottom chord angles of the ribs, on which the concrete was dumped, the same as on the form carriages. The lagging used was 3 by 3-in. dressed pine or spruce 16 ft. long, and was placed as the concreting of the arch proceeded above the 15 deg. line on the side-wall and above the sidewalk on the core-wall. After the arch had reached such a height that the concrete could not be passed over the lagging directly from ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... 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
... so too," said Willet, "and as I've no mind to be beaten about by it, suppose we build a spruce shelter in the gorge here and ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in the affairs of others of his feathered friends, Peter had quite forgotten the Warblers. Then one day when he was in the Green Forest where the spruce-trees grow, he stopped to rest. This particular part of the Green Forest was low and damp, and on many of the trees gray moss grew, hanging down from the branches and making the trees look much older than they really were. Peter was staring at a hanging branch of this moss without thinking ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... district, generally takes up its quarters among the operatives of the old town. Merchants, retail traders, and artisans have common interests which unite them together. On Sundays only, the masters make themselves spruce and foregather apart. On the other hand, the labouring classes, which constitute scarcely a fifth of the population, mingle with ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Devonshire; and Anna might wander about the old house and grounds as she chose, and feel how much better she had loved it in its tumble-down state, the state she had known as a child, when her mother lived there and was happy. Everything was aggressively spruce now, indoors and out. Susie's money and Susie's taste had rubbed off all the mellowness and all the romance. Anna was glad to leave it again, and be taken to Marienbad, or any place where there was royalty, for ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... others of fashionable cut and finest cloth. Black broad-cloth frocks, and satin or velvet vests, were quite common. Individuals thus attired formed a majority of the guests—for in young settlements the "hotel" or "tavern" is also a boarding-house, where the spruce "storekeepers" and better class of clerks take their meals—usually sleeping in the office ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... days when fashion itself had not become old-fashioned and got improved into Smart Society,—this haunted half-mile or more still retains many fine old residences of brown stone and of red brick, which are spruce and well-kept. One such, on the west side of the street, of red brick, with a high stoop of brown stone, is a boarding-house, and in it is an apartment to which, on a certain clear, cold afternoon in October, the reader's presence in the spirit is ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in the wind and sleet, Out in the woods of fir and spruce and pine, Down in the hot slopes of the dripping mine We dreamed of you and Oh, the dream was sweet! And now you bless the felon food we eat And make each iron cell a sacred shrine; For when your love thrills in the blood like wine, ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... this she "tried out" in a golden dish, over the fire. The oil thus got she used to anoint his healing wound. She used a dressing of clay and leaves; and when the fever flushed him she made him comfortable on his bed of spruce-tips, bathed his forehead and cheeks, and gave him cold water from a spring that trickled down over the moss some fifty feet to westward ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... any kind of civilization rather than a continuance of the eternal snows, wondered if this were any better. Jim pitched the tent under some spruce-trees and high up on a ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... and a CARPENTER, A WEBBE*, a DYER, and a TAPISER**, *weaver **tapestry-maker Were with us eke, cloth'd in one livery, Of a solemn and great fraternity. Full fresh and new their gear y-picked* was. *spruce Their knives were y-chaped* not with brass, *mounted But all with silver wrought full clean and well, Their girdles and their pouches *every deal*. *in every part* Well seemed each of them a fair burgess, To sitten in a guild-hall, on the dais. Evereach, for the wisdom that ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... hundreds of Mr. Robinson's Irish emigrants camped on the plains. Many had built themselves huts of pine and spruce boughs; some with slabs and others with logs of trees. Three or four Government store-houses and a house for the Superintendent, the Hon. Peter Robinson, were in course of erection. I had letters of introduction ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... smoking for some months these shavings impregnated with the oil of tobacco, are taken out through an opening in the lower part of the stem and smoked over. The Hudson Baymen make passable pipe-stems by taking a straight-grained piece of willow or spruce without knots, and cutting through the outer layers of bark and wood. This stick is heated in the ashes and by twisting the end in contrary directions the heart-wood may be gradually drawn out, leaving a ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... around the fort is one immense level swamp, thickly covered with willows, and dotted here and there with a few clumps of pine-trees. The only large timber in the vicinity grows on the banks of Hayes and Nelson Rivers, and consists chiefly of spruce fir. The swampy nature of the ground has rendered it necessary to raise the houses in the fort several feet in the air upon blocks of wood; and the squares are intersected by elevated wooden platforms, which ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... tears. Rich terraces flowed in velvet waves down to the waiting river, murmuring its trysting joy; a full-robed choir of oak and elm and maple kept their eternal places in a grander loft than man could build them, while pine and spruce and cedar, disrobing never, but snatching their bridal garments from the winter ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... Falieri he did not fear in the least; and, indeed, the old man seemed to indulge less frequently in his violent outbreaks of furious passion, and to have laid aside his rugged untamable fierceness, since his marriage. There he sat beside his beautiful Annunciata, spruce and prim, in the richest, gayest apparel, smirking and smiling, challenging in the sweet glances of his grey eyes,—from which a treacherous tear stole from time to time,—those who were present to say if any one of them could boast ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... for a cause, and perceived, at length, higher up the bank of the stream, a fox, which, having evidently sent them adrift, was eagerly watching their progress and the effect they produced. Satisfied with the result, cunning Reynard at last selected a larger branch of spruce-fir than usual, and couching himself down on it, set it adrift as he had done the others. The birds, now well trained to indifference, scarcely moved till he was in the midst of them, when, making rapid snaps right ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... long inlet of the sea, extending up country over a score of miles. The district is hilly, and is covered by a forest of rather small trees, spruce and birch, but further inland the hills are generally bare. There are comparatively few ...
— Report by the Governor on a Visit to the Micmac Indians at Bay d'Espoir - Colonial Reports, Miscellaneous. No. 54. Newfoundland • William MacGregor
... many of the riders with admiration in their eyes. Judith sat Swift lightly, edging mischievously now against one rider, now another. Swift bit Buster, who reared while Douglas swore laughingly. Magpies swooped from the blue spruce at the edge of the corral, black and white against pale blue. The cattle, all Herefords, red and white, milled about and lowed and tossed worried heads. The riders, sheepskin chaps flapping, bright neckerchiefs fluttering, shouted and cursed and fingered their lariats. Dogs, ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... 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' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Vermont,—abundant, filling swamps acres in extent, alone or associated with other trees, mostly black spruce; growing depressed and scattered on Katahdin at an altitude of 4000 feet; Massachusetts,—rather common, at least northward; Rhode Island,—not reported; Connecticut,—occasional in the northern half of the state; reported as far south as Danbury ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... opened its office first in humble quarters in Spruce street, and since then it has occupied rooms in Beekman, John and Reade streets. These down-town locations have served some valuable purposes. They were accessible to the teachers and workers in passing to and from the South, and in the shipment of goods ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... of acquiescence. He was gazing steadily out over the spruce belt which covered the lower slopes of the hillside. His keen deep-set eyes were on the shipping lying out in the cove, watching the fussy approach of ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... utmost fairyland Across the wintry snows; He makes the fir-tree and the spruce To blossom like ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... one after another along the canal, many of them looking mighty spruce and ship-shape in their jerkin of Archangel tar picked out with white and green. Some carried gay iron railings, and quite a parterre of flower-pots. Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they had been brought up on Loch Carron side; men fished ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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, ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... with their warm skins, he took his traps and camping outfit and set out for that region of country, although it was more than two hundred miles away. Here he found tracks in abundance, and so before he made his little hunting lodge in the midst of a spruce grove, he set his traps for the fierce wolves in a spot which seemed to be a rallying place of theirs. As they are very suspicious and clever, he carefully placed two traps close together and sprinkled them ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... as we reach the foot of the lake, stands a spruce and rather large house of modern aspect, but with several gables, and much overgrown with ivy,—a very pretty and comfortable house, built, adorned, and cared for with commendable taste. We inquired ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... summer sky, Tasselled with clouds light-woven by the sun, Sprung its blue arch above the abutting crags O'er-roofing the vast portal of the land Beyond the wall of mountains. We had passed The high source of the Saco; and bewildered In the dwarf spruce-belts of the Crystal Hills, Had heard above us, like a voice in the cloud, The horn of Fabyan sounding; and atop Of old Agioochook had seen the mountains' Piled to the northward, shagged with wood, and thick As meadow mole-hills,—the far sea of Casco, A white gleam on the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... 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 leave a drop ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... lasses too,—there, halt a bit. Mrs. Fairfield, do you hear?—halt. I think his reverence has given us a capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them, and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the haymakers. Harry" (this in a whisper), "catch the parson, and tell him to come ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the open glades that diversified its dense growth, and the babbling brook that wound its way through it to the river, all combined to make it very desirable for a timber claim. At a short distance from the river the land rose gradually to a high ridge, and on the top of this grew a thick wood of spruce and fir. ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... rain, and around it crouched several urchins busy making oatmeal cakes in the embers. On one side a respectable lean-to had been constructed by nailing a plank to two fir-trees, running sloping poles thence to the ground, and thatching the whole with spruce branches and heather. On the other side two small dilapidated home-made tents were pitched. Dougal motioned his companion into the lean-to, where they had some privacy from the rest ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... any brisk or windy liquor. In North America, a mixture of spruce beer, rum, and sugar, was so called. The 17th regiment had a society called the Swizzle Club, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... were respectively rather older and rather younger than Pocket, and they came in looking very spruce, the one in his Eton jacket, the other in tails, but both in shiny toppers that excited an unworthy prejudice in the wearer of the green tie with red spots. They seemed very glad to see him, however, and the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... hills back 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
... basin. Out of this basin we had just taken trout enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper. In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient woods. It was a scene ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... traghetto and we come to a very commonplace house, and then, after a cinematograph office and another calle, to the Palazzo Benzon, famous a hundred years ago for its literary and artistic receptions, and now spruce and modern with more of the striking blue posts, the most vivid on the canal. In this house Byron has often been; hither he brought Moore. It is spacious but tawdry, and its plate-glass gives one a shock. ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... about here, were a spearshaft, eight feet in length, recently made and ochred; parts of old canoes, fragments of their skin-dresses, &c. For some distance around, the trunks of many of the birch, and of that species of spruce pine called here the Var (Pinus balsamifera) had been rinded; these people using the inner part of the bark of that kind of tree for food. Some of the cuts in the trees with the axe, were evidently made the preceding year. Besides these, we ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various
... oiled wheels. After the huge clatter of New York, there is something mellow and human about the drowsy hum of Chestnut Street, the genteel reaches of Walnut, and the neat frontage of Spruce Street. Ellenora, so quick to notice her surroundings, was at first bored, then amused, at last lulled by the intimate life of her new home. She had never been abroad, but declared that London, out-of-the-way London, must be something like this. The fine, disdainful air of Locust Street, the curiously ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... eminently respectable class. Possessed of an amiable, rosy face, and soft, silky white hair. Sound in his principles; tidy in his dress; blessed with moderate politics and a good digestion—a harmless, healthy, spruce, speckless, ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... 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 commanding eye, for he ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... were of wolfskin, and on his shoulder he carried an axe, with broad, shining blade. He was a mighty woodsman now, and could make a spray of chips fly around him as he hewed his way through the trunk of spruce-tree. ...
— The First Christmas Tree - A Story of the Forest • Henry Van Dyke
... their purposes. From the beginning in the land of my birth it had been a thing as familiar as the dial and as necessary. The farms along our road were only stumpy recesses in the wilderness, with irregular curving outlines of thick timber—beech and birch and maple and balsam and spruce and pine and tamarack—forever whispering of the unconquered lands that rolled in great billowy ridges ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... for directly in front of them was a wigwam, so cunningly built in behind a growth of small spruce trees that unless one knew of its whereabouts it might be easily passed by. The Indian girl laughed at Anne's exclamation, and nodded at her in ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... sequoia the most massive of living things, furnished most of them. But the largest happen to be the two giant incense cedars, which stand on either side of the main entrance. These are eight feet and ten inches in diameter. Then there are two columns on the south side, both cut from a spruce that was four feet seven inches through at 101 feet ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... crack of a dry stick checked her. The next instant she picked up his rifle, seized his arm, and fairly dragged him into a spruce thicket. ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... Foedora! How often I had given the 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 ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... life-zone are found in this province. This region of Coahuila receives the highest rainfall; this is evidenced by the luxuriant growth of boreal plants living in the higher places there (Baker, 1956:131). Spruce, pine, and aspen occur at higher elevations and oaks, thorny shrubs, and grasslands are ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... beyond measure to know that we had made the crossing in safety and that their wait under the upturned 'James Caird' was ended. Curiously enough, they did not recognize Worsley, who had left them a hairy, dirty ruffian and had returned his spruce and shaven self. They thought he was one of the whalers. When one of them asked why no member of the party had come round with the relief, Worsley said, "What do you mean?" "We thought the Boss or one of the others would come round," they explained. "What's the matter with ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... not reply, being plainly at a loss to understand how there could be any doubt about the matter. Alice went to the round drawing-room, where she found Mr. Parker examining a trophy of Indian armor, and presenting a back view of a short gentleman in a spruce blue frock-coat. A new hat and pair of gloves were also visible as he stood looking upward with his hands behind him. When he turned to greet Alice lie displayed a face expressive of resolute self-esteem, with eyes whose watery brightness, together with the bareness of his temples, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... with the larger ring where the Circus was last week. The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... lovely, on the other side of an extensive lawn; a grove of spruce firs making a beautiful setting for it on one side. The riders passed round the lawn, through a part of the plantations, and came up to the house at the before-mentioned left wing. Mr. Carlisle threw himself off his horse and came ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... 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 ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... tasted like hop-tea, and not at all like coffee. Then she tried a little flagroot 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 Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... The continuity of the dry season is broken by a rainy fit commencing a few days after the autumnal equinox, and called el Cordonazo de San Francisco. "Throughout South America (observes Mr. Spruce) the periodical alternations of dry and rainy weather are laid to the account of those saints whose 'days' coincide nearly with the epochs of change. But if the weather be rainy when it ought to be fair, or if the rains ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... safeguard against an early thaw in the stream, while the bore was being equipped with a five-foot flume. You all know what that means, hundreds of miles from navigation or a main traveled road. To get that necessary lumber, he felled trees in a spruce grove up the ravine; every board was hewn by hand. And about two-thirds of those sluice-boxes, the bottoms fitted with riffles, were finished. Afterwards, at that camp where he stopped for dogs, I learned that aside from a few days at long intervals, when the two ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... garden. The place had been greatly improved since Halcyone's first discovery of its new occupant. The shutters were all a spruce green and the paths weeded and tidy, while the borders were full of bedded-out plants and flowers. A famous gardener from Upminster renowned through all the West had come over and given his personal attention to the ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... their 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 not ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... through a fat and flourishing rejuvenated land, stopping at the towns of Willows, Red Bluff and Redding, crossing the counties of Colusa, Glenn, Tehama, and Shasta, went the spruce wagon drawn by the dappled chestnuts with cream-colored manes and tails. Billy picked up only three horses for shipment, although he visited many farms; and Saxon talked with the women while he looked over the stock ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... to northward lies a land Where the trees together stand Closely as the blades of wheat When the summer is complete. Rolling like an ocean wide Over vale and mountainside, Balsam, hemlock, spruce and pine,— All those mighty trees are mine. There's a river flowing free,— All its waves belong to me. There's a lake so clear and bright Stars shine out of it all night; Rowan-berries round it spread ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... innuendo, the dexterous hint, the hard, keen subtlety, the rough common sense, all valuable in their degree, and all profitable to their possessor, are only of an inferior grade. Let the true orator come forth, and the spruce pleader is instantly flung into the background. Let the appeal of a powerful mind be made to the jury, and all the small address, and practical skill, and sly ingenuity, are dropped behind. The passion of the true orator communicates its passion; his natural richness ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... a chopping-block. Under the shrubbery, where the sun cannot penetrate, are stored home-made firkins full of yellow butter, and great cheeses, and heaps of substantial home-baked bread. Kegs of hard cider and spruce beer and perhaps more potent brews are abroach, and behind the haggling and jesting and bustle you may catch the sound of muskets or the whoop of the Indians from afar. Meanwhile, in the settlements, all manner of industries were stimulated, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... nature enter the old piles of Oxford and English 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
... pilgrimage or religious duty, while meantime there was always a kind of Russian carnival on the ice, oxen being sometimes roasted whole, and all kinds of "fakirs," as they are now termed, selling doughnuts, spruce-beer, and gingerbread, or tempting the adventurous with thimblerig; many pedestrians stopping at the old-fashioned inn on Smith's Island for hot punch. Juleps and cobblers, and the "one thousand and one American fancy drinks," were not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... gone out in the dark. Here again my work was taken, and liked so much that I was offered the basis (at twenty dollars a week) that I desired; I was even assigned to a desk where I should write in the office; and the next morning I came joyfully down to Spruce Street to occupy it. But I was met at the door by one of the editors, who said lightly, as if it were a trifling affair, "Well, we've concluded to waive the idea of an engagement," and once more my bright hopes of a basis ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had been raging among these beeches, spruce and oaks. Great tangles of their cut boughs were cluttering the ground, as though a band of gigantic woodcutters had just passed by. The trunks had been severed a little distance from the ground with a clean and glistening stroke, as though with a single ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... never allowed to go fishing, or wade in the cove on warm days, or go off in the woods as I do. I doubt if Melvina Lyon could tell the difference 'twixt a partridge and heron, or if she could tell a spruce tree from a fir. And as for presents, hers are of no account. They are but dolls, and silver thimbles and silk aprons. Why! did not my father bring me home a fine beaver skin for a hood, and a pair of duck's wings, and a pair of moccasins the very last time he went north!" And Anna, out of ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... Noyes. Gum.' He's the boy what sells gum to the theayter. He was agoin' to a party whar you hev to be the name of a book. He wore the surplus so his name was the Little Minister. We took it out in gum— spruce and pepsin. Iry swallered his'n every time, and Miss Hudgers was afeard he'd be stuck ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... stopped at a spruce residence, approached by a long lane, and on knocking at the porch with his ponderous fist, a woman came timidly to the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... stretching more than twenty feet from tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as perfectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars,—oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under your own special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... Creek tumbled out of the southeast, and roved between noble borders of silver spruce into the shadows of the Blue Mountains of the north, half a dozen miles across and ten long of grazing and farm land, rich, loamy bottom land ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the city of New York, "Brandreth's Pills specially recommended to purify the blood." His office consisted of a room about ten feet square, located in what was then known as the Sun building, an edifice ten by forty feet, situated at the corner of Spruce and Nassau streets, where the Tribune is now published. His "factory" was at his residence in Hudson street. He put up a large gilt sign over the Sun office, five or six feet wide by the length of ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... 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, or about the plants, to which ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... in the field, and the low hedge can shelter nothing; but bordering the next, on rather higher ground, is an ash copse, with some few spruce firs. Resting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a light air now and again draws along beside the nut-tree bushes of the hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... island-world was not all rock of different colors: for over there, not too far away to see, was a dark-green spruce tree. Because rough winds had swept over this while it was growing, its branches were scraggly and twisted. They could not grow straight and even, like a tree in a quiet forest. But never think, for all of that, ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... 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, that no bright ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... fallen, 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 ran, ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... is not much left of the steamer, and I am not justified in throwing away the lives of my men," replied a very spruce-looking officer. ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... shop a quarter of an hour later a new man, spruce and clean, smoking a cigarette, and with the terrors of the night far behind him. The cold water had been like a sweet, keen tonic to him. The cobwebs had gone from his brain. Memory had returned. What a fool he had been. There ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... 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 ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... 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. He mentioned your ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... person, of an angel-like divine countenance, a saint, an humble mind, a meet spirit clothed in rags, beg, and now ready to be starved? To see a silly contemptible sloven in apparel, ragged in his coat, polite in speech, of a divine spirit, wise? another neat in clothes, spruce, full of courtesy, empty of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... heels in saving your back. If a god took her, he showed excellent taste, and it would be utter sacrilege to punish you for failing to learn her whereabouts. Come, Agathocles, be not so gloomy. Do you think it is Aesculapius who has come to your aid? He, at least, is no spruce, young rival. Be conciliatory, or I may, perhaps, venture to try my ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... The spruce trees dream of summer hours And birds that carrolled sweetly, Of gentle winds and smiling flowers ...
— Out of the North • Howard V. Sutherland
... morning of May 5th, while mechanics were pumping gasolene into the tanks of the NC-1, a spark from an electric pump fell into a pool of gasolene and set fire to her whole right side. In a moment the heavily "doped" linen wings, with seasoned spruce spars, were a mass of hot flame. The sailors at work on the machine, with complete disregard of their personal safety, ran for fire-extinguishers, and with the fire burning around the mouth of the open tanks, confined it to the right wings of the machine and ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... the Cape, that the extreme heat of an Indian climate is so favourable to the growth of hair as to put those wights who are afflicted with dark chevelures, which was my case, to the inconvenient necessity of chin-scraping twice on the game day, when they wish to appear particularly spruce of an evening. Now I intended to have shaved before the play began, but in the hurry of dressing had forgotten all about it; and upon inspecting my visage in a glass, after I had donned Lady Macbeth's night-gear, the lower part of it appeared so swart in contrast ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... would have probably ensued, but it was prevented by the spruce toastmaster, who gave a sentiment, and turning to the two politicians, "Pray, gentlemen," said he, "let us have done with these musty politics: I would always leave them to the beer-suckers in Butcher Row. Come, let us have something ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... clouds of dawn and dusk on the southern sky-line. In fair {48} weather the long pink ridge of the Olympics could be seen towards Puget Sound. Inland from Nootka were vast mountain ridges heavily forested to the very clouds with fir trees and spruce of incredible size. Lower down grew cypress, with gnarled red roots entangling the rocks to the very water's edge, Spanish moss swinging from branch to branch, and partridge drumming in the underbrush. For a month the deep-sea travellers enjoyed ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... thoughtful like: "I think I'm rather different from other wimmin, Elizabeth. Very few would admire a man like Mr. Roarings. But 'e's my style, so to speak, if I was pickin' an' choosin'. But to show you 'ow strange I am," she goes on, "if 'e made 'isself spruce I should get to ...
— Our Elizabeth - A Humour Novel • Florence A. Kilpatrick |
