"Spruce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that as it was raining I should not see any foreigners; but I was not so lucky, for first I met Mr. Dening, and then, seeing the Consul and Dr. Hepburn coming down the road, evidently dressed for dining in the flag-ship, and looking spruce and clean, I dodged up an alley to avoid them; but they saw me, and did not wonder that I wished to escape notice, for my old betto's hat, my torn green paper waterproof, and my riding-skirt and boots, were ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... it took him nearly three hours to reach the shack that stood on the bank, just a little way below the great falls of Roaring River. Here he abandoned the old road that was so seldom traveled since lumbering operations had been stopped in that district, owing to the removal of available pine and spruce. At a word from him the dogs sat down in their traces, their wiry coats giving out a thin vapor, and he went down the path to the log building. The door was closed and he had already noted that no film of smoke came from the ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... Columbia, Budonga Forest, Duck Mountain, Elephant Marsh, Freycinet's Peninsula, Grand Canyon, Hargeis, Jubaland, Kangaroo Island, Little Barrier Island, Luangwa, Manitoba, Mirso, Nweru Marsh, Ontario, Pennsylvania State, Riding Mountain, Rustenburg, Sabi-Pongola, Snow Creek, Spruce Woods, Superior National Game, Swaziland, Teton, Toro, Turtle Mountain, Wichita, Wilson's Promontory Preserved game, murdering, Preserves, private game; private and public interests in Press, duty of Italian; New York, value of, ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... 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 ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame
... Dick Bruce, spruce and scholarly, hugely pleased with himself, because he had an article in The National Review, on the strenght of the colonies in war time; and some lines entitled "Baby's Boredom" in Fireside Chat, concerning which he had already ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... thrusting its way through the jaws of strong, sharp hills of red sandstone piled up in broken and stratified masses above grey slate rock. On these hills cling forests of spruce and larch in woolly masses that march down the combes to the very water's edge. It is wild ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... 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
... Wapping, or an Exact and Perfect Relation of the Life and Devilish Practises of Joan Peterson, who dwelt in Spruce Island, near Wapping; Who was condemned for practising Witchcraft, and sentenced to be Hanged at Tyburn, on Munday the 11th of ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... kills another hour discussing the merits of the different animals he meets with there. These important duties being done, he strolls to an exhibition, or to a print-shop, and looks over a portfolio of caricatures; thence he keeps on moving to a fashionable hotel, to take white spruce beer(!) and sandwiches; here, after arranging his parties for the evening, be returns home to dress. After looking over the cards which have been left for him, he proceeds to his toilette with his valet, and is dressed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... waste of Hindhead. He strayed away from the road and found a sunny place of turf amidst the heather and lay down and slept for an hour or so. He arose refreshed. He got some food at the Huts Inn on the Hindhead crest and went on across sunlit heathery wildernesses variegated by patches of spruce and fir and silver birch. And then suddenly his mental inanition was at an end and his thoughts were wide and brave again. He was astonished that for a moment he could have forgotten that he was vowed to ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... for a job that will send him shuttling from one planet to another. To achieve it they study, they sweat, they make all out efforts to meet and suck up to anybody they think might help. Finally, when and if they get an interview for one of the few openings, they spruce up in their best clothes, put on their best party manners, present themselves as the sincere, high I.Q., ambitious young men that they are—and then flunk their chance. I decided I might as well ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... early for the nocturnal roamings and voices of the creatures of the night. Like the basin of a great amphitheater the frozen lake lay revealed in the light of the moon and a billion stars. Beyond it rose the spruce forest, black and forbidding. Along its nearer edges stood hushed walls of tamarack, bowed in the smothering clutch of snow and ice, shut in by ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... a blessing (of a sort) behind, slammed the door upon it, and materialized to the vision of the girl on the landing as an energetic and spruce-looking man of forty-odd, with a harassed expression. At need, Miss Holland could summon ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... confused and bewildered. Things looked dark around him, and the great boughs of the Norway spruce, close up by his window, nodded and winked at him in ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... the snow-man's head. He had put an old black pipe between the snow-man's grinning, orange-colored teeth. Gloves hung limply from the snow-man's arm-stumps and to one of them a cane was fastened. Billy had managed to give the snow-man's head a cock to one side. Altogether he looked so spruce and jovial that it was impossible not ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... and saw that it was a servant-maid of fifteen or sixteen, who was indeed extremely winsome and spruce. As soon however as the maid caught a glimpse of Chia Yuen, she speedily turned herself round and withdrew out of sight. But, as luck would have it, it happened that Pei Ming was coming along, and seeing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... him and lay down on a pile of spruce twigs outside the tent. The dew was rather heavy, but he was young and strong, and it is a luxury to sleep in the open in that elixir-like mountain air. He went to sleep at once, and it was evidently early morning when Saunders awakened him, for the moon, which had not ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... footpath and strawberry bank far down beneath the shining waves. As the creek goes onward to the river the intervale disappears, and the banks become grey and steep, crowned with the tall and slender stems of the spruce and cedar. New Brunswick is rich in minerals, and veins of coal and iron abound at this place; but many years must elapse ere mines are worked to any extent. A few are in operation at present; but while the pine waves the wealth of her green plumage to the lumber-man, or the new-cleared ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... The spruce trees rustled amid their umbrageous boughs. The sob of the saxophone still came through the window. I saw Stella tremble through all her tall young body. A tear fell upon the floor and rebounded against ...
— Maw's Vacation - The Story of a Human Being in the Yellowstone • Emerson Hough
... clothed by the son, father, and grandfather; while the undulations and hollows, which seventy or eighty years since must have looked only like wrinkles in the black morasses, being now drained and limed, are skirted with deep woods, particularly of spruce, which thrives wonderfully, and covered with excellent grass. We drove in the droskie and ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... every day upon that island to shave himself, so that while most of his fellows bore bristling beards, and my own chin was as raspy as a hedgehog, he might have presented himself at the Court of St. James's, so spruce was his appearance. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Fir, spruce and pines line the shore of this part of Westport, the ground rising moderately inland. A half mile, more or less, from the river, runs the public highway from Clough Point, the northern extremity ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... put on a new summer black bombazin suit; and being come now to an agreement with my barber to keep my perriwig in good order at 20s. a-year, I am like to go very spruce, more than I used to do. To the King's playhouse, and there saw "Philaster;" [A tragedy, by Beaumont and Fletcher.] where it is pretty to see how I could remember almost all along, ever since I was a boy, Arethusa, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... you are become so well-dressed, Horatio; I wondered how you came to spruce up so!" interrupted ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... fancy of the wealthier natives. Every fine day mats are spread before the doors and the tripang is put out to dry, as well as sugar, salt, biscuit, tea, cloths, and other things that get injured by an excessively moist atmosphere. In the morning and evening, spruce Chinamen stroll about or chat at each other's doors, in blue trousers, white jacket, and a queue into which red silk is plaited till it reaches almost to their heels. An old Bugis hadji regularly takes an evening stroll in all the dignity of flowing green silk robe and gay turban, followed ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Deary, deary me, is that what they call the fashion?" cried Mrs Asplin, holding the girl in outstretched arms, and turning her slowly round and round, to take in the details of her attire. "You look so spruce, child, that I hardly knew you; but there, it won't be long, I expect, before the true Peggy peeps out. Come in, darling. There's a new rug in the hail; don't trip over it! We have been saying we needed it for five years back, but it was bought only last week, to smarten ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... it was. Confused at being caught by a priest with a fruit in one hand and another in her mouth, she made no answer to the questions of the handsome young abbe. She had never imagined such an abbe,—dapper and spruce as hands could make him, in dazzling linen and fine black cloth without spot ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... out!" shouted the little fellow. "He'll get you if you don't. Who said Hooky couldn't pitch? There's more pitch in him than you can find in a big chew of spruce gum." ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... do think there is no luxury equal to that of lying before a good fire on a good spruce bed, after a good supper, and a hard moose chase in a fine clear frosty moonlit starry night. But to enter into the spirit of this, you must understand what a moose chase is: the man himself runs the moose down by pursuing the track. Your success in killing depends on the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... laste greate partie, where Dorsey dyd serve so well ye terrapines and steamed oysters, and howe thatt itt is verament and trewe thatt Miss Porridge is to live, after hir marriage, in a howse in Locust strete, or peradventure in Spruce, or in Pyne, for in this towne all the stretes are of woode, albeit ye ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Camden and back, as if it had been a 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 as yet invented, and men ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... Glimmerglass was no longer home, and he spread his wings once more and took his way toward the Arctic Circle. Over the hills, crowded with maple and beech and birch; over the Great Tahquamenon Swamp, with its cranberry marshes, its tangles of spruce and cedar, and its thin, scattered ranks of tamarack; over the sandy ridges where the pine-trees stand tall and stately, and out on Lake Superior. The water was blue, and the sunshine was bright; the wind was ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... of the front step. A servant threw open the door of the breakfast room, and Delme mechanically entered it. It was filled with strangers; on some of these the spruce undertaker was fitting silk scarfs; while others were busy at ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... topped the rise and leveled to the tree-girdled mesa. Young Pete stared. This was the most beautiful spot he had ever seen. Ringed round by a great forest of spruce, the Blue Mesa lay shimmering in the sunset like an emerald lake, beneath a cloudless sky tinged with crimson, gold, and amethyst. Across the mesa stood a cabin, the only dwelling in that silent expanse. And this ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... shepherds say I'm not to blame, For cleanly dress and spruce attire Preserve alive love's wanton flame And gently ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... beard and neglected dress of a Shylock should be admitted into the list. I would also occasionally lay aside the small clothes, and assume the dress of a woman. I would often trip it along with the appearance and gesture of a spruce milliner; and I would often stalk with the solemn air and sweeping train of a duchess. But of all the infinite shapes of human dress, I must confess that, my favourite is the kind of doublet that prince Harry wore when he assaulted Falstaff. The ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... 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 ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... cordage and calking. They have been granted a new lease of life and may be found moored at the wharfs, beached on the marine railways, or anchored in the stream, eagerly awaiting their turn to refit. It is a matter of vital concern that the freight on spruce boards from Bangor to New York has increased to five dollars a thousand feet. Many of these craft belong to grandfatherly skippers who dared not venture past Cape Cod in December, lest the venerable Matilda Emerson or the valetudinarian Joshua R. Coggswell should open up and founder ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... signal, and one they liked little. The temperature was falling. It was quite dark at three o'clock in the afternoon, and they were obliged to travel by snow-light. When camp was finally made, after halting for the night in a thicket of pine and spruce trees, the men were cold, tired ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... very, very little impatient; but Ford once more politely expressed his sorrow, and abstained from putting on his coat. At that moment, too, Dick Lee came tiptoeing in from his cheerless garret, and looking astonishingly spruce. The "shine" on his shoes was a brilliancy to be remembered; and so was the shine on his face, and the sunset glow ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... continue so, under favourable circumstances, for two years longer; after which she will decline. Crowing hens, and those that have large combs, are generally looked on with mistrust; but this is mere silliness and superstition—though it is possible that a spruce young cock would as much object to a spouse with such peculiar addictions, as a young fellow of our own species would to a damsel who whistled and who wore whiskers. Fowls with yellow legs should be avoided; they are generally of a tender ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... on 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 ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... war-club, and stealthily pushing aside the loose birch-bark door-flap of the nearest lodge, peeped inside. By the ember light he saw that every Iroquois, man and woman, was fast asleep, under furs, on spruce boughs around ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... reality, the silver, ivory, or wooden "osculatory" of the mediaeval Church?[94] So with "Ash-Wednesday," a single syllable opens a whole chapter of Church history. Again, the Latin headings to the psalms of the Psalter; with what an impatient gesture can we imagine a spruce reviser brushing these away as so much trash! They are not trash, they are way marks that tell of times when devout men loved those catchwords, as we love the first lines of our favorite hymns. A few of the headings, such as "De Profundis" and "Miserere," still possess ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... one who might dare to look upon them. The height of land or plateau which constitutes the interior of the Labrador peninsula is from 2,000 to 2,500 feet above the sea level, fairly heavily wooded with spruce, fir, hackmatack, and birch, and not at all the desolate waste it has been pictured by many writers. The barrenness of Labrador is confined to the coast, and one cannot enter the interior in any direction without ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... peeresses and their daughters, &c. The simplest pew below belongs to the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, peers and their sons, or members of Parliament, &c. The Chapel Royal, like the State-rooms, is fresh and spruce from renewal. It has, however, wisely avoided all departure from the original character of the building, which has nothing but the carved roof and the great square window to distinguish it from any other chapel of the same size and style. It is difficult ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... 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 idlers of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... precision of the spruce, which might indeed have been laid out upon geometrical lines! When a baby spruce has but three twigs, one will stand stiffly upright, as if it bore the responsibility of upholding the spruce traditions of the ages, while the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... tired to fix a date for the resumption of his own name or the taking of another. Flinging himself on his couch of moss and trailing ground-spruce, with the ferns closing over him, and the pines over ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... though simpler in the absence of any enriched moldings and having less projection, is the chimney piece on the second floor of an old Spruce Street house shown by an accompanying illustration. It has substantially the same overmantel frame and mantel treatment. Incidentally it furnishes an excellent example of the complete paneling of one end of a room with the familiar six-panel ordinary inside doors ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... 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, that no bright ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... ever known, and declaring that she would work all day and all night rather than leave her; but the more reluctance she showed, the more determined was Perronel, and she could not but submit to her fate, only adding one more entreaty that she might take her jackdaw, which was now a spruce grey-headed bird. Perronel said it would be presumption in a waiting-woman, but Ambrose declared that at Chelsea there were all manner of beasts and birds, beloved by the children and by their father himself, and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the same course: it at one time conveyed no suggestion of mean finery or shabby splendour, as now it does. 'Voluble' was an epithet which had nothing of slight in it, but meant what 'fluent' means now; 'dapper' was what in German 'tapfer' is; not so much neat and spruce as brave and bold; 'plausible' was worthy of applause; 'pert' is now brisk and lively, but with a very distinct subaudition, which once it had not, of sauciness as well; 'lewd' meant no more than unlearned, as the lay or common people might be supposed to be. [Footnote: Having in mind ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... as in England there is usually no other source of warmth. A bitter skirmish of winds, carrying powdered snow dust, nipped round the gateways of the dormitories and Tait McKenzie's fine statue of Whitefield stood sharply outlined against a cold blue sky. I lunched at a varsity hash counter on Spruce Street and bought tobacco in a varsity drug store, where a New York tailor, over for the day, was cajoling students into buying his "snappy styles" in time for Christmas. There is no more interesting game than watching a lot of college men, trying to pick out those who may be of some value to ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... many thousand lakes of various sizes, some of which are connected by fine water courses, while others are entirely isolated. The wooded country is undulating, the elevated portions being covered chiefly with pine, fir, spruce, and other coniferous trees, and the lowest depressions being occupied by lakes, ponds, or marshes, around which occur the tamarack, willow, and other trees which thrive in moist ground, while the regions between these extremes ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... universal appendages of fishing-houses, boats, and "flakes." One seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region, crossed with foot-paths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and washed by the surf,—a most kindly office on the part of the sea, you will allow, when once ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and help him with the new enclosure. To this Edward cheerfully consented; and as soon as they arrived at the cottage, and Humphrey had had his breakfast, they took their axes and went out to fell at a cluster of small spruce-firs about a mile off. ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... known to have been sick of the scurvy at Stadacona, so that Cartier was much surprised to see him out and well. He contrived to make him relate the particulars of his recovery, and thus found out that a decoction of the bark and foliage of the white spruce-tree furnished the savages with a remedy. Having recourse to this enabled the French captain to arrest the progress of the disease among his own people, and, in a short time, to bring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... prism (Fig. 3). The smallest side of the prism is designed to serve as a flat keel. The axis is formed of a metallic float, from whence start radii that form the skeleton of the framework, and that are designed for connecting the center with five long spruce beams that form the angles of the prism. To these beams are affixed the cross pieces that form the openwork sides. Five long pieces of wood parallel with the beams, but not so strong as they, protect the cross pieces and secure them against breakage ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... beautiful; the priest in his bright, silver chasuble, dotted with gilt crosses, the deacon, the chanters in holiday surplice of gold and silver, the spruce volunteer singers with oiled hair, the joyous melodies of holiday songs, the ceaseless blessing of the throng by the priests with flower-bedecked tern candles with the constantly repeated exclamations: "Christ has risen! ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... approximately 6000 ft. in the Yangtsze basin, there exist in districts remote from the traffic of the great rivers, extensive forests of conifers, like those of Central Europe in character, but with different species of silver fir, larch, spruce and Cembran pine. Below this altitude the woods are composed of deciduous and evergreen broad-leafed trees and shrubs, mingled together in a profusion of species. Pure broad-leafed forests of one or two species are rare, though small woods of oak, of alder ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... contiguous drops the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge the devoted town; To shops, in crowds, the daggled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy; The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach, Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach; The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... of caching which is sometimes resorted to is to place the articles in the top of an evergreen tree, such as the pine, hemlock, or spruce. The thick boughs are so arranged around the packages that they can not be seen from beneath, and they are tied to a limb to prevent them from being blown out by the wind. This will only answer for such articles as will not become injured ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... Sir, 'tis to be suppos'd; you can boast it by Experience, There are Young Ladies for spruce Pedro's—Jasper— Must be content with ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... 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 ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... The next thing the camper should do is to make a bed, and the branches of the spruce ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... Hall was a dense plantation of spruce and larch. The man who planned the estate evidently possessed both taste and spirit. It presented a beautiful and pleasing picture. A sense of homeliness was given by a number of Alderney cattle and young hunters grazing in the park on both ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... stone to put in the bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little craft by bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then the secret was out, and there it was in a little dome of dried grass among some spruce roots under ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... people slept he caused birch, spruce, and cottonwood trees to spring up in the low places, and when the people awoke in the morning they clapped their hands in delight, for the birds were singing in the tree-tops and the green leaves with the sunlight flickering ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... repaired, and has much to recommend it, though trappers think it gives a taint which scares their game away. The paddles were and are of all shapes and sizes, long and short, broad and narrow, spoon-blade and square; and they were and are made of all kinds of wood, from the lightest spruce to the much heavier but handsomer bird's-eye maple. Sails were and are only used with light winds dead aft, and not often in birch-barks even then, because there is no ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... and a late April wind was whipping down the valley. It swayed the tops of the tall pine and spruce trees as they shouldered up from the swift brook below. It tossed into driving spray the water of Break Neck Falls where it leaped one hundred feet below with a thundering roar and swirl. It tossed as ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... years earlier. I feel certain that it started full of expectations, as it felt itself guided along the familiar road which followed the windings of the lake, with the high wooded banks towering over it, and then along a mile of highroad between dense plantations of spruce and Scotch fir, until the treeless, stonewalled open country of Northern Ireland was reached. The hopes of the old carriage must have risen high as the houses of the little town came into view; first one-storied, white-washed and thatched; then two-storied, ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... every tendril. Here was a flower 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!" he ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... may be a very neat sylvan affair, provided you are camping where spruce or balsam fir may be easily reached, and in the hot months when bark will "peel"; and you have a day in which to work at a camp. The best bark camps I have ever seen are in the Adirondacks. Some of them are rather elaborate in construction, requiring ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... Considerable material from the spruce borers was collected at Harpswell, Maine, but the species were not identified. Although these insects were in the pupa stage, most of the testes were too old. There were no dividing spermatogonia and few spermatocyte mitoses. ...
— Studies in Spermatogenesis - Part II • Nettie Maria Stevens
... what a shout rent the air! The spruce widow affords the most excellent cheer; For comfort in quarters there's nothing can beat her, So up rose the lads with a welcome to greet her: The muse with true gallantry led her to place, And Truth said good humour ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Must one day come in competition, By virtue of some sly petition: Yet mum for that; hope still the best, Nor let such cares disturb thy rest. Methinks I hear thee loud as trumpet, As bagpipe shrill or oyster-strumpet; Methinks I see thee, spruce and fine, With coat embroider'd richly shine, And dazzle all the idol faces, As through the hall thy worship paces; (Though this I speak but at a venture, Supposing thou hast tick with Hunter,) Methinks I see a blackguard rout Attend thy coach, and hear them ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... 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
... spruce boughs with some wheat bran, till it tastes sufficiently of the spruce; bruise some allspice, and put in; strain it, and put two quarts of molasses to half a barrel; when it is nearly cold, put in half a pint of yeast; after it has worked ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... a robin mounted to a spruce-spire and acted as Job's comforter to all the birds of the garden by singing—ah, so plaintively and sweetly!—of the dismal days of frost and snow, he "preened"—i.e. went over and combed every feather, and tested and ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of swamp land, fringed by tamarack and slim-bodied spruce, promised fair for his scheme. Back and forth, back and forth over its cushion of deep moss he passed, seeking for a treacherous place—a place wherein Shag would sink to the belly; where the sand-mud would grasp his legs like soft chains ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... 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 was cut up by the stamping feet of many horses. It was the evening of a sad ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... sandy, especially about the town of Green Bay. Towards the lake, and near the body of water called Sturgeon Bay, connected with Green Bay, and between that and the lake, are extensive swamps and cranberry marshes. Wild rice, tamarisk, and spruce, grow here. About Rock river and from thence to the Mississippi, there is much excellent land, but a deficiency of timber. Lead and copper ore, and probably other minerals, abound in this part ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... morning, however, Scandawati had disappeared. They were full of excitement; for they thought that he had escaped to the enemy. They ranged the woods in search of him, and at length found him in a thicket near the town. He lay dead, on a bed of spruce boughs which he had made, his throat deeply gashed with a knife. He had died by his own hand, a victim of mortified pride. 'See,' writes Father Ragueneau, 'how much our Indians stand ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... of water, 2-1/2 pints molasses, 3 eggs well beaten, 1 gill yeast, put into two quarts of the water boiling hot, put in 50 drops of any oil you wish the flavour of, or mix one ounce each, oil sarsafras, spruce, and wintergreen; then use the 50 drops. For ginger flavour take 2 ounces ginger root bruised and a few hops, and boil for 30 minutes in one gallon of the water, strain and mix all; let it stand 2 hours and bottle, using ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... 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
... 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 of winter be heavier ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... parted the rank grass in search of the noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet—a most reserved, discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's serenade. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... are royally outfitted in silk stockings, etc. We return, as from a raid, with our spoils and our wounded. I am now very dandy: I announced two years ago that I should change. Slovenly youth, all right—not slovenly age. So really now I am pretty spruce; always a white shirt, white necktie, fresh shave, silk socks, O ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... way to the front door, but returned almost immediately. Drawing the major aside, I whispered a request, which led to a certain small article being passed over to me, after which I sauntered out on the stoop just in time to encounter the spruce but irate figure of Mr. Moore, who had crossed from the ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... see Death and not to fear, But rather to take truce! How often have I seen you at a bier, And there look fresh and spruce! You fragrant flowers! then teach me, that my breath Like yours may sweeten ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... here at Scheveningen for centuries of summer visitors, while at our Long Island hotel there was a losing bet on a scant generation of them. When it seemed likely that it might be a winning bet the sand was planked there in front of the hotel to the sea with spruce boards. It was very handsomely planked, but it was never afterwards touched, apparently, for any manner of repairs. Here, for half a mile the dune on which the hotel stands is shored up with massive masonry, and bricked for carriages, ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... taken, and liked so much that I was offered the basis (at twenty dollars a week) that I desired; I was even assigned to a desk where I should write in the office; and the next morning I came joyfully down to Spruce Street to occupy it. But I was met at the door by one of the editors, who said lightly, as if it were a trifling affair, "Well, we've concluded to waive the idea of an engagement," and once more my bright hopes of a basis dispersed themselves. I said, with what ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the gendarmes could not have been impressed with respect by it. On the other hand, had I used the best style of public equipage, the likatchi, the kind which consists of an elegant little sledge, a fine horse, and a spruce, well-fed, well-dressed driver, it is probable that they would not have let me pass at all. Ladies are not permitted, by etiquette, to patronize these likatchi, alone, and no man will take his wife or a woman whom he respects to drive in one. Had I foreseen that there would be any occasion for ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... drink. A handful of hops, to a pailful of water, and a half-pint of molasses, makes good hop beer. Spruce mixed with hops is pleasanter than hops alone. Boxberry, fever-bush, sweet fern, and horseradish make a good and healthy diet-drink. The winter evergreen, or rheumatism weed, thrown in, is very beneficial to humors. Be careful and not mistake kill-lamb ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... advocated to plant walnuts with white spruce. The idea is that spruce will shade the ground, kill the side branches of the walnut, and help to force the walnuts to grow long slender poles. It is understood, and expected, that the spruce will be ruined, as their leaders would grow into the branches of the walnut. As ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Eighth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... boughs, apparently, are not used for decoration, but the floor of the parlour is strewn with sprigs of fragrant juniper or spruce-pine, or with rye-straw.{57} The straw was probably intended originally to bring to the house, by means of sacramental contact, the wholesome influences of the corn-spirit, though the common people connect it with the stable at Bethlehem. The practice of laying straw and the same Christian ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... 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. Near Bangor, the fence-posts, on account of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... they made A grand parade, With marching train-band, guild, and trade: The burgomaster in robes arrayed, Gold chain, and mace, and gay cockade, Great keys carried, and flags displayed, Pompous marshal and spruce young aide, Carriage and foot and cavalcade; While big drums thundered and trumpets brayed, And all the bands of the canton played; The fountain spouted lemonade, Children drank of the bright cascade; Spectators of every rank and grade, The young and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... given, and the entire force, perhaps a hundred and fifty strong, fell in one solid mass on the mob, knocking men over right and left, and laying heads open at every blow. The panic-stricken crowd fled up Chatham Street, across the Park, and down Spruce and Frankfort Streets, punished terribly at every step. The space around the building being cleared, a portion of the police rushed inside, where the work of destruction was going on. The sight of the blue-coats ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... manure-spotted shoes, this greasy, shapeless straw hat, with its dozen matches showing their red heads over the band, the good soils and fertilizers of Kansas resting placidly in his ears and the lines of his neck—such a Romeo might not tempt his Juliet; he must spruce up. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... and so on in order, in the plain Quaker fashion which had thus entitled the days of the week and the months of the year. Eight were to lie parallel with High, and to be called after the trees of the forest,—Spruce, Chestnut, Pine. In the midst of the city, at the crossing of High and Broad Streets, was to be a square of ten acres, to contain the public offices; and in each quarter of the city was to be a similar open ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... his loot back into his pockets and came closer to the fire. Its warmth felt most comfortable, for the Spring night was growing chill. He looked about him at the motley company, some half-spruce in clothing that suggested a Kuppenmarx label and a not too far association with a tailor's goose, others in rags, all but one unshaven and all more or less dirty—for the open road is close to Nature, which ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Haverhill, to "sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"—a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching in a neighboring church which was thus gloomily surrounded. He gave out as his text, "Why do the wicked live?" and as he peered in the dim light at his manuscript, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... high, where the Barons formed their ranks to meet the third Harry in the Battle of Lewes, the actual fighting being on Mount Harry, the hill on Blackcap's east. A cross to mark the struggle, cut into the turf of the Plain, is still occasionally visible. More noticeable is the "V" in spruce firs planted on the escarpment to commemorate the Jubilee ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... with some wheat bran, till it tastes sufficiently of the spruce; bruise some allspice, and put in; strain it, and put two quarts of molasses to half a barrel; when it is nearly cold, put in half a pint of yeast; after it has worked sufficiently, ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... included chiefly among the coniferous evergreens, embracing the Pine, the Fir, the Spruce, and the Cypress. Though many of the deciduous trees assume more or less of this outline, it is the normal and characteristic form of the Pines and their kindred species. It is a peculiarity of the pyramidal trees, with a few exceptions, to remain always disfigured, after the loss of an important ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... side. Then yonder is spruce. And our gardens! If you women-folks love posies as most females does, you'd ought to be here a spell later. Roses ain't out yet ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and amorous for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... been hot after him, and he knew not how to defend himself. His photograph was implored. He was waylaid by journalists shabby and by journalists spruce, and the resulting interviews made him squirm. He became a man of mark at Pickering's. Photographers entreated him to sit free of charge. What irritated him in the whole vast affair was the continual insistence ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... jumped in among the men the smoke was creepin' out between the lids of the hatch. We ripped that off and began diggin' up the cargo—crates of chairs, rolls of mattin', some spruce scantling—runnin' the nozzle of the hose down as far as we could get it. There were no water-tight compartments which we could have flooded in those days as there are now, or we could have smothered it first off. What we had to do was to fight it inch by inch. I knew where the explosives were, ...
— The Veiled Lady - and Other Men and Women • F. Hopkinson Smith
... they came to a place, somewhat open, and here they found club-moss in abundance lining the ground. To their left, the rippling of the brook could be heard flowing on its way to the river. Ahead of them stood the thick forest of pine, fir, and spruce. It was a cool November day, and when the boys started from home their warm mittens had felt good. But the brisk tramp had set their blood in rapid circulation, and with bare hands they now gathered the moss and stuffed it into bags which they had brought with them. They worked ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... the top of the spruce tree to feed upon the brown seeds still clinging to the pigweed and goldenrod stalks sticking out above the snow by the roadside, it dips and floats through the air like its charming little cousin, the goldfinch. They have several characteristics in common besides their ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... vats and in tuns; Ping, Drangollie, and the Draget fine, Mead, Mattebru, and the Metheling. Red wine, the claret and the white, with Tent and Alicant, in whom I delight. Wine of Languedoc and of Orleans thereto: Single beer, and other that is double: Spruce beer, and the beer of Hamburgh: Malmsey, Tires, ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... his hand, so doing! Upside down or wedged across a channel under water, trees were all the same to Hervey Willetts. He lived in trees. He knew nothing whatever about the different kinds of trees and he could not tell spruce from walnut. But he could hang by one leg from a rotten branch, the while playing a harmonica. He was for the boy scout movement, because he was for movement generally. As long as the scouts kept moving, ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... nearly dark when Blake and Harding led two packhorses through a thin spruce wood, with Benson lagging a short distance behind. They had spent some time crossing a wide stretch of rolling country, dotted with clumps of poplar and birch, which was still sparsely inhabited, and now they had ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... a grievous load, And Chelsea, flower'd and spruce, And antique thingummies in spode; The only thing that none bestowed Was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... is too picked, too spruce, too affected, too odd, As it were too peregrinate, as I ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the doctor, who began to understand this allegorical talk of the North-West trader, and feel uncomfortable, and therefore didn't like to say no. "Well, then, the spruce must stay with the pirch, or the pirch live with the spruce," continued Peter. "The peech wood between the two are dangerous to both, for it's only fit ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... in to see bout gittin' my washin' done, and gosh all spruce gum, thar was one of them pig tailed heathen Chineeze, he jist looked fer all the world like a picter on Aunt Nancy Smith's tea cups. I wuz sort of sot back fer a minnit, coz 'I sed to myself—I don't ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... water, a quarter of a pound of hops, and a tea-cupful of ginger. Boil them together till all the hops sink to the bottom. Then dip out a bucket full of the liquor, and stir into it six quarts of molasses, and three ounces and a half of the essence of spruce. When all is dissolved, mix it with the liquor in the kettle; strain it through a hair sieve into a cask; and stir well into it half a pint of good strong yeast. Let it ferment a day or two; then bung up the cask, and you may bottle ...
— Directions for Cookery, in its Various Branches • Eliza Leslie
... very welcome, we do never Our Candles, Pipes or Fier grutch To daily customers and such, They'r Company (without expence,) For that's sufficient recompence. Here at a table all alone, Sits (studying) a spruce youngster, (one Who doth conceipt himself fully witty, And's counted one o' th' wits o' th' City,) Till by him (with a stately grace,) A Spanish Don himself doth place. Then (cap in hand) a brisk Monsieur He takes his seat, and crowds as near ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... months for 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 ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... confused variety. Mr. Stoutenburgh sings round his hearth in the shape of a black cricket. Mr. Linden passes unnoticed in the invisibility of a midge—nothing more dangerous. Mr. Somers does all the mischief he can in the way of devouring widows' houses. The two Messrs. De Staff" (two very spruce and moustachioed young gentlemen) "figure as wasp and snail—one would hardly think they belonged to the same family—but there is no accounting for these things. Mr. George Somers professes to have the taste of a bee—but luckily the garden ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... 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 wait ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... came fresh want and misery, more forsaken and hungry ones, more and more of the human "waste" that is cast into the streets and the darkness. And on the other hand, an army of street-sweepers was now appearing to remove all the filth of the past four and twenty hours, in order that Paris, spruce already at sunrise, might not blush for having thrown up such a mass of dirt and loathsomeness in the course of a ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... all, by my own unaided exertions. This thought was terribly afflicting, and brought before me, in vivid array, all the dreadful realities of my condition. I could see no ray of hope. In this condition of mind I could find no better shelter than the spreading branches of a spruce tree, under which, covered with earth and boughs, I lay during the two succeeding days; the storm, meanwhile, raging with unabated violence. While thus exposed, and suffering from cold and hunger, a little benumbed bird, not larger than a snow-bird, hopped within my reach. I instantly ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... stopped short, seeming to shrink smaller and smaller before my eyes. Then he edged sidewise to a great stump, hid himself among the roots, and stood stock-still,—a beautiful picture of innocence and curiosity, framed in the rough brown roots of the spruce stump. It was his first teaching to hide and be still. Just as he needed it most, he had forgotten ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... zigzag around the world, in which men and women of genius can be raised, and that is all. It is with man as it is with vegetation. In the valley you find the oak and elm tossing their branches defiantly to the storm, and as you advance up the mountain side the hemlock, the pine, the birch, the spruce, the fir, and finally you come to little dwarfed trees, that look like other trees seen through a telescope reversed—every limb twisted as through pain—getting a scanty subsistence from the miserly crevices of the rocks. You go on ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... result of the constant rotting of the brown and yellow bark, not only of the prostrate trees, but of the many killed by crowding and unable to seek the earth with the natural instinct of death. And above, the green of hemlock and spruce was perennially fresh and young, glistening and fragrant. Here and there was a small clearing where the clans had erected their ingenious and hideous totem poles, out of place in the ancient beauty ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... fellow-countrymen—(Mr. Marble was observed by the chairman to bite his lips, to keep in a good round laugh, when those words, fellow-countrymen, came out)—I tell you what it is, the things that are wanted now are boots, and shoes, and stockings, and jackets—and not gingerbread, and sugar plums, and spruce beer, and ...
— Mike Marble - His Crotchets and Oddities. • Uncle Frank
... opposite side of this little bay was a piece of perfectly smooth water, the softly breathing wind did not ruffle the bay at all. The long arm of the shore that was thrust out into the lake was heavily wooded. Rows of dark, almost black, northern spruce stood shouldering each other on that farther shore, making a perfect wall of verdure. Their deep shadow was already beginning to creep across the water toward the ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... the blue-grass knoll a quarter of 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
... shaft-like, from the brittle needles of the pines which sentineled the ridges, they hinted at depths to which the sun's rays could not penetrate; they hinted at chasms padded with moss, shadowed and dim beneath chapel arches of spruce and hemlock, even chilly with the spray of spring-fed brooks that brawled in miniature rocky canyons. And they made the gasping heat of the valley a little more ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... adaptation among living organisms, there is a factor at work other than chemistry and physics—not independent of them, but making a purposive use of them. Cut off the central shoot that leads the young spruce tree upwards, and one of the shoots from the whirl of lateral branches below it slowly rises up and takes the place of the lost leader. Here is an action not prompted by the environment, but by the morphological needs of the tree, and it illustrates ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... burning on the hearth, for the cabin was apt to be damp after its many months of abandonment. It had been swept and garnished with boughs of sweet-smelling spruce and pine. ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... the village he continued to think of his return to Mattie. The kitchen was a poor place, not "spruce" and shining as his mother had kept it in his boyhood; but it was surprising what a homelike look the mere fact of Zeena's absence gave it. And he pictured what it would be like that evening, when he and Mattie were there after supper. For the first time they would ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... volume is that of a characteristic reindeer team and sled. Another shows the home of the North Russian branch of the Eskimo family. The writer vividly recalls the sight of a semi-wild herd of reindeer feeding in the dense pine and spruce woods. They were digging down through the deep snow to get the succulent reindeer moss. We approached on our Russian ponies with our, to them, strange-looking dress. What a thrill it gave us to see them, as if at signal ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... many miles over a barren, rocky, undulating country, covered with var and spruce trees, with an undergrowth of raspberry, wild rhododendron, and alder. We passed a chain of lakes extending for sixteen miles, their length varying from one to three miles, and their shores covered ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... dull, foggy morning, with a drizzling mist. No matter; it was their wedding-day, thought Will, and no one could be more cheerful than he as he donned his becoming sailor suit and brushed his curly hair, and made himself look as spruce and neat as any jack-tar in the land. Rain and mist were nothing to this son of the briny ocean, the sunshine was in his heart, and he could scarcely believe in the wonderful good fortune which was to give him the brightest, the dearest, ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... apothecary's son, a regular shop-drudge," he raged inwardly, watching the youth of the Faubourg Saint-Germain pass under his eyes; graceful, spruce, fashionably dressed, with a certain uniformity of air, a sameness due to a fineness of contour, and a certain dignity of carriage and expression; though, at the same time, each one differed from the rest in the ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... the taste of the town; on the contrary he was regularly guided by contemporary taste and practice. His stage is less crowded: he amalgamated the four gallants of A Cure for a Cuckold in the person of Mr. Spruce, at the expense of a dramatic scene (I, ii, 31-125); and he ended the sub-plot with the fourth act instead of bringing its persons into the final scene, with some loss of liveliness and a concomitant gain in unity of effect. ...
— The City Bride (1696) - Or The Merry Cuckold • Joseph Harris
... all, the thing you had under your coat was a saw. I saw you hide something under the woodpile here, but I'm so dumb that I didn't think much of it at the time. Now, the log over the gully was a spruce log, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... their assistance and sympathy it really seemed—in this fiction—that a catastrophe might be averted. You may imagine what a drove of little grubs those children looked in the course of half an hour. Not that any of them were particularly spruce to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the Hemlock spruce of America; which, while growing by itself in open ground, is the most wilful and fantastic, as well as the most graceful, of all the firs; imitating the shape, not of its kindred, but of an enormous ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... necessary business the next day. The observatories were carried ashore, and placed upon an elevated rock on one side of the cove, close to the Resolution. A party of men, with an officer, was sent to cut wood, and to clear a place for the conveniency of watering. Others were employed to brew spruce-beer, as pine-trees abounded here. The forge was also set up, to make the iron-work wanting for the repairs of the fore-mast. For, besides one of the bibs being defective, the larboard trestle-tree and one of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... chuckled for several moments and then said: "Well, in my courting-days, you know, I used to go around fixed up in style. Many and many a time I've heard the girls whisper to one another and say, 'Oh, my! Ain't Mr. Rabbit looking spruce to-day?' There was one season in particular that I was careful to primp up and look sassy. I put bergamot oil on my hair, and kept it brushed so slick that a fly would slip up and cripple himself ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... Sonoran, and Lower Sonoran in 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 present ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... in the evening of the day that Hiram Hooker set out to ride with the sheepskin to Jerkline Jo, on her way to Julia, a strange figure presented itself at the door of the lighted commissary tent of Demarest, Spruce & ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... mingling of tenderness and admiration in the glance she bent upon him. He was a goodly youth to look at, tall and strongly knit in figure, upright as a young spruce fir, with a keen, dark-skinned face, square in outline and with a peculiar mobility of expression. The eyes were black and sparkling, and the thick, short, curling hair was sombre as the raven's wing. There was no lack of intellect in the ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... wives insisted on his waiting and resting the night there; for he had need of sleep, he was so tired after walking and bathing, dancing and weeping. And they gave him a nice, spruce, dimity-curtained bed to sleep in; and presented him with a beautiful suit of new garments for the morrow; "for," they said, "they had been at his christening, and it was easy to see that the good Dame Ursula, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... the left, close to the public house, and then go straight on; it is the third house past Poret's. There is a small spruce-fir close to the gate; you cannot make ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... woodsmen and rustics; that is, a selvaggia and its inhabitants salvages." What Thoreau loved, like all men of healthy minds, was the occasional experience of untamed wildness. "I love to see occasionally," he adds, "a man from whom the usnea (lichen) hangs as gracefully as from a spruce." ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... trail is still fresh in the snow. There are many of them, and our wigwam will again be full of fat venison. Hist, yonder they are; they will see us if we do not move with great caution. You take the circuit round that clump of spruce to the right, and I will keep farther ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... is really an important one here, and that is the protection against the winds with shelter-belts. Now, at the University of Illinois they planted out some forty acres to test that with all the varieties they could get together, and they planted spruce trees not only on the outside of the orchard but they planted them in through the orchard, dividing the orchards up into ten acre plots. Quite a number of the early planters of apples in Illinois also put windbreaks around their orchards with considerable detriment ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... said the friendly spruce-tree, for it was her voice that had called. "You shall live on my warmest branch all winter ...
— The Book of Nature Myths • Florence Holbrook
... considerable trade to Norway and to the Baltic, from whence they bring back deals and fir timber, oaken plank, balks, spars, oars, pitch, tar, hemp, flax, spruce canvas, and sail-cloth, with all manner of naval stores, which they generally have a consumption for in their own port, where they build a very great number of ships every year, besides refitting and ...
— Tour through the Eastern Counties of England, 1722 • Daniel Defoe
... is easy to make a small cache by bending down a young tree, tying your bundle to the top, and letting it spring up again. A spruce-tree gives excellent shelter to anything placed in its branches. (See also what is said ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... disdain With the peasant a glass of his wine to drain But, soft—to the left o' the fire I see Three riflemen, who from the Tyrol should be Emmerick, come, boy, to them will we. Birds of this feather 'tis luck to find, Whose trim's so spruce, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... office of the Prouty House, redolent of the juniper and spruce boughs which took the bareness from the walls, the guests hungrily watched the hands of the clock creep towards ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... St. Paul's Church, another at the head of Vesey Street, and others at the head of Barclay, Murray, and Warren. On the Park Row or Chatham Street side a barricade stretched across Beekman Street; another, in the shape of a right angle, stood in Printing House Square, one face opposite Spruce Street, the other looking across the Presbyterian churchyard and Nassau Street;[62] another ran across Frankfort Street; another at the entrance of Centre Street; and still another ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... 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
... rag-collectors, a whole Monmouth Street of rubbish,—behold the entire Babylonian Talmud. These tall Socinians are the Polish brethren, and the dumpy vellums overhead are Dutch divines. The cupboard contains Greek and Latin manuscripts, and those spruce fashionables are Spencer, and Cowley, and Sir William Davenant. And the new books which crown the upper shelves, still uncut and fresh from the publisher, are the last brochures of Mr. Jeremy ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... half-drawn blinds marked where spruce window trimmers added last touches to masterpieces created overnight, but directly opposite nothing screened the offense of the Voiceless Speech, which continued to display its accusing ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... by the Old South Congregation in 1753 when it offered its sanctuary to the worshipers in King's Chapel, after that edifice was burned, for them to hold their Christmas services. It was with the implicit understanding that there was to be no spruce, holly, or other greens used on that occasion to ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... As the auctioneer—a spruce importation from Newbern—mounted the bench, a splendid carriage, drawn by two magnificent grays, and driven by a darky in livery, made its way through the crowd, and drew up opposite the stand. In it were Dawsey ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... with equal Malice, with equal Impotence. Jack Triplett came into my Lady Airy's about Eight of [the] Clock. You know the manner we sit at a Visit, and I need not describe the Circle; but Mr. Triplett came in, introduced by two Tapers supported by a spruce Servant, whose Hair is under a Cap till my Lady's Candles are all lighted up, and the Hour of Ceremony begins: I say, Jack Triplett came in, and singing (for he is really good Company) Every Feature, Charming ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele |
