"Spur" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forth their clouds of dense smoke, darkening the air until it seemed more like night than day; then on a few miles farther, to the little station known as the "Y," so-called on account of the form of the spur tracks owned by the mining company, by which the ore was brought ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... by some devil or other, that you do not sink under such fatigues as these? For eight whole days we have been riding long stages, and have not been sparing of whip and spur to urge on confounded screws, whose cursed trot shook us so very much that, for my part, I feel as if every limb was out of joint; without mentioning a worse mishap which troubles me very much in a place I will not mention. And yet, no sooner are you at your journey's end, than you go out ...
— Sganarelle - or The Self-Deceived Husband • Moliere
... heavens through, Quick the ray sprang: Unheard it flew, Sped by the touch of an unseen spur. It crumbled the dusk of the deep That folds the worlds in sleep, And shot ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... also described to us, the 'crooked, lumbering animal, put together anyhow, with a short, thick neck; flat-faced, and of a dark colour, with grey eyes and blood-red complexion; the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared and deaf, hardly yielding to whip or spur.'[8] Just think how long I have lived at a distance from you, and how all those temptations you speak of have endeavoured to lure me away, not perhaps without some success, even though I myself may not have ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... thunder-roll was echoed from crag, slide, forest, spur, and basin. The "home of storms" was a ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... was visible only from one place, and that was directly looking up the valley. If one went too far to the right or left the head disappeared from view behind jutting crags, and it was impossible to see it from overhead, because the head was almost under a great spur of a mighty mountain. ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... my 'poetic career' began. At thirteen I wrote a long poem a la 'Lady of the Lake'—1300 lines in six days. At thirteen I wrote a drama of 2000 lines, a full-fledged passionate thing that I began on the spur of the moment without forethought, just to spite my doctor who said I was very ill and must not touch a book. My health broke down permanently about this time, and my regular studies being stopped I read voraciously. I suppose the greater part of my reading was done between fourteen ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... and those already named, the schooner, for so we must call her, carried two heavy, but graceful topsails upon her fore and mainmasts, and even a jigger sail or spanker and gaff above it, on a slender spur rigged from the quarter deck. Altogether the schooner with her various appurtenances, resembled such a yacht as some of the English noblemen sail in the channel and about the Isle of Man in ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... Lady Mason, becoming courageous on the spur of the moment, "I want you to leave that for a moment and ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... remaining portion of our journey to Hazree Soolt[a]n, which was a distance of eighteen miles, was nothing but a barren waste with occasional patches of low jungle. We were now evidently on the farthest spur of the Hindoo Khoosh; the hills were low and detached, gradually uniting into the endless plain which bounded the horizon to the north and west. On the road we met a messenger who was on his way to Sir Alexander Burnes at K[a]bul, having come from Bokhara, bearing a letter from the Vakeel, ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... concerted action of spur, whip, and rein, Judith swung the Prince about so that he was headed for the open valley, running toward the west, giving him his head only a little, driving him. He broke into a thundering run, snorting as, with mane and tail flying, he dashed through ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... was another settler in Alexandria. He followed Strato at the head of one of the schools in the museum. He was very successful in bringing up the young men, who needed, he used to say, modesty and the love of praise, as a horse needs bridle and spur. His eloquence was so pleasing that he was wittily called Glycon, or the sweet. Carneades of Cyrene at the same time held a high place among philosophers; but as he had removed to Athens, where he was at the head ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... head of cattle, under the lead of one of my friends out here, a grumpy old sea captain, who has had a rather diversified life, trying his hand as sailor, buffalo hunter, butcher, apothecary (mirabile dictu), and cowboy. Sewall tried to spur his horse which began kicking and rolled over ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... And to spur her on and to stimulate her, Mr. Barrett published several volumes of her poems. It was immature, pedantic work, but still it had a certain glow and gave promise of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... lists were made—the trumpet's blast Rang pealing through the air. My 'squire made lace and rivet fast And brought my tried destrerre. I rode where sat fair Isidore Inez Mathilde Borghese; From spur to crest she scann'd me o'er, Then ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... to her fingertips. The psychology of fear is a fascinating thing. Fanny had reached the second stage. She was quite taken out of herself. She forgot her stone-bruised feet. She was no longer conscious of cold. She ran now, fleetly, lightly, the ground seeming to spur her on. She had given up the trail completely now. She told herself that if she ran on, down, down, down, she must come to the valley sometime. Unless she was turned about, and headed in the direction of one of those hideous chasms. She stopped a moment, peering through the snow curtain, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... India, in 1893, the face of a spur four thousand feet high, of the lower ranges of the Himalayas, slipped into the gorge of the headwaters of the Ganges River in successive rock falls which lasted for three days. Blocks of stone were projected for a mile, and clouds of limestone dust were spread over the surrounding ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... it had done before, and from that I judged that I had grown into a fine rider. Yet my complacency was soon marred by an unfortunate occurrence, Desiring to outdo Woloda before the audience in the carriage, I dropped a little behind. Then with whip and spur I urged my steed forward, and at the same time assumed a natural, graceful attitude, with the intention of whooting past the carriage on the side on which Katenka was seated. My only doubt was whether to halloo or not as I did ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... chalets and nibbling sheep, and other glimpses of far lower altitudes, where distance diminished the chalets to toys and obliterated the sheep altogether; and every now and then some ermined monarch of the Alps swung magnificently into view for a moment, then drifted past an intervening spur and disappeared again. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The biologist, who had befriended him before, had given him some work in his laboratory. The work was not well paid, but the association with the students, which aroused his intellectual appetites, had given him a new spur. What saddened her was that it was all entirely beyond her sphere of influence, of usefulness to him. Living, as they should, in an almost savage isolation, she dreaded his absorption in anything ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the mountain-side. Drawing off his hat he stretched out his arms to meet it, and his eyes closed as the cool wind struck his throat and face and lifted the hair from his forehead. About him the mountains lay like a tumultuous sea-the Jellico Spur, stilled gradually on every side into vague, purple shapes against the broken rim of the sky, and Pine Mountain and the Cumberland Range racing in like breakers from the north. Under him lay Jellico Valley, and just visible in a wooded cove, whence Indian Creek crept into sight, was a ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... lasted long enough to form and season my character. I had been driven to exertion by a mixture of pride and generosity; my understanding being uncultivated, I had acted from the virtuous impulse of the moment, but never from rational motive, which alone can be permanent in its operation. When the spur of the occasion pressed upon me no longer, I relapsed into my former inactivity. When the great interests and strong passions, by which I had been impelled to exertion, subsided, all other feelings, and all less objects, seemed stale, flat, and unprofitable. For the tranquillity ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... same circumstances. Petersen's tale on board the Josephine and the strange code he had had; the finding of a similar one in the cave; the chest and the powder-horn and pistol; the queer black rock and Sam's story in connection with it; all these events had combined to spur the four young adventurers on in their quest. Now they had discovered another odd looking box and with the hope that springs eternal in the human breast they were anxiously and eagerly awaiting a ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property, borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD, from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servant, the maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and she, Laura, could have believed ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... were heard firing incessantly all day and every day. His shells were now seen bursting on a southern spur of ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... to deliver herself from the unpleasantness of her enforced espial by the utterance of some frightful cry such as would at the same time punish with the pains of terror their fool-hardy intrusion. But the spur of the moment was seldom indeed so sharp with Dorothy as to drive her to act without reflection, and a moment showed her that such persons being in the marquis's household as would meet in the middle of the night, and on prohibited ground, apparently ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... pedestal. And so on this occasion he went into the caucus with a written speech in his hat, eulogistic of his favorite. He had meant to have the speech at his tongue's end, and to get it off as if on the spur of the moment. But the speech stayed where it was put, in the speaker's hat, and failed to materialize where and when it was wanted on the speaker's tongue. As the mountain would not go to Mahomet, Mahomet like a sensible prophet went to the mountain. Our orator ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... they bound instantly to their saddles, and spur away from the spot; Harkness, as commanded, following at their horses' heels. This he does without daring to disobey; trotting after, in company with the dog, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... training for that high faculty of imagination by virtue of which, after all, we so largely love and hate, choose right or wrong, bear and forbear, adapt ourselves to the ups and downs of this world, and spur our dull souls to the high hopes of a better—anxiety on these ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... dancing. Each dancer composed his own steps on the spur of the moment, but executed them with a degree of precision and violence that would have caused civilised dancing masters to blush with shame and envy. Mrs Gore and Nelly danced too, weeping the while with joy, and ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... peril in which she was placed by the condition of her screw propeller. He resolved to rely on the mainsail for keeping in the right route as far as possible, and to brace the yards obliquely, so as not to present a direct front to the storm. The yacht turned about like a swift horse that feels the spur, and presented a broadside to the billows. The only question was, how long would she hold out with so little sail, and what sail could resist such violence for any length of time. The great advantage of keeping up the mainsail was that it presented to the waves only the most solid portions of the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... his uncovered head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... exclaimed Seyton; "stretch to your oars, or I will spur you to the task with my dagger—they will launch ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... which registered 7,310 feet, to Killa Rabat (3,900 feet) in the Panjkhora Valley, was for the first half of the distance by a long and densely wooded spur, within an easy slope, but on nearing the foot we found it very stony. Our party was met at the entrance by the khan, and later on we were invited to dinner by him. Long before this I had got quite used to eating with my fingers, but on this occasion ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... several gentlemen of fortune who lived in the neighborhood. To the nearest one, a gentleman on horseback was directing his way. The horse required no direction, in truth, for so accustomed was he to the ride to Exeter, and to the good fare he enjoyed on arriving there, that neither whip nor spur was necessary; he traced the familiar road ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... special groups of nerve-cells which produce directly opposite effects. One of these has the power of accelerating the action of the heart, while the other has the power of retarding or arresting this action. One acts as the spur, the other as the bridle. According as one or the other predominates, the action of the heart will be stimulated or restrained. Among the great modern discoveries in physiology is that of the existence of a ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a sudden violent temper at one of the helpers in the fields that the man ran as for his life, and refused to set foot again on any of the Chiltern farms. In the afternoon he sent for Honora to ride with him, and scolded her for keeping him waiting. And he wore a spur, and pressed his horse so savagely that she cried out in remonstrance, although at such times she had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... object within five miles. I now applied the spurs to my horse, who dashed madly down the declivity. Giving one look behind, I saw that Roche, or at least his horse, had entirely given up the chase. The prairie was comparatively smooth, and although I dared not to spur my horse to his full speed, I was soon alongside of the huge animal. It was a bull of the largest size, and his bright, glaring eyeballs, peering out from his shaggy frontlet of hair, shewed plainly that he was maddened by his wounds and ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... was accomplished as only your father could manage such a matter on the spur of the moment—consequences accepted with his usual philosophy and bonhomie. If he could have foreseen all the consequences, he would not, I think, have refused to give ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... lost in the roar of his motor. The speed-boat shot forward like a horse at the touch of a spur. In a whirl of white water Mascola sped ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... take charge of the first four prisoners we bring out. Put the nooses round their necks, and draw them tight enough to let the men feel that they are there. Fasten the other ends to your saddles, and warn them, if they put up their hands to throw off the nooses, you will spur your horses into a gallop. That threat will ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... called the "Serpent Mound." The head of the serpent lies towards the point of the spur, and then like the serpent, its body winds gracefully back for 700 feet, the tail curved into a triple coil. From this and other evidences lately collected, we may assume that the serpent was among ...
— Mound-Builders • William J. Smyth
... dinners, or suppers at a restaurant, unless organized on the spur of the moment, are ordered beforehand, and everything, including the waiter's tip, arranged and settled for. If you have not an account at the restaurant, pay the bill at the time you order the menu and reserve the table. Flowers ...
— The Complete Bachelor - Manners for Men • Walter Germain
... well enough. The restive little man detested spur or curb: against whatever was urgent or obligatory, he was sure to revolt. However, I accepted the responsibility—not, certainly, without fear, but fear blent with other sentiments, curiosity, amongst ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... attempt to achieve a perfect tie. This son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twenty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too many American young people, got the spur when he should have had the rein. He therefore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit which his father says in one of these papers abounds in the marts of his native country. All these by- gone shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very few of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... prince,—the Miramare, where the half-crazed Empress of the Mexicans vainly waits her husband's return from the experiment of paternal government in the New World. It would be hard to tell how Art has charmed rock and wave at Miramare, until the spur of those rugged Triestine hills, jutting into the sea, has been made the seat of ease and luxury, but the visitor is aware of the magic as soon as he passes the gate of the palace grounds. These are in great part ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... Matthew's boarding house, in Montreal. At the table d'hote there was a raw-boned young English merchant, who remarked that Fawcett, to have been wounded in the heel, must have been running away. Fawcett's Irish blood rose to his forehead, and on the spur of the moment he felled the thoughtless Englishman ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... his life before had Caspar such motives for displaying his hunter-skill. His liberty—that of all of them—depended on all his success in procuring the necessary number of hides; and this was spur enough to ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... comes up faster than the wind; Leon hears the sound of his steps, his spurs jingle; he catches up with Leon, seizes him by the mane, flings himself with a bound upon his back, and goads him with the spur. Leon rears; the rider bends over toward his ear and says, stroking him with his whip: "I am not heavy to carry:—thirty pounds of colonel." The unhappy lover of Mlle. Clementine makes a violent effort and springs sideways; ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... one or two of these riders would spur in pursuit, rope him by horns or legs, and throw him to the ground. Then dismounting and springing nimbly upon the prostrate beast, they quickly fastened the beast's feet with a "hogtie" hitch so that he could not rise, ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... worthless took the value of Ophir. Its features had before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough map of my possessions, the first careless ride round their boundaries. Yes, the land on which I stood—for miles, to the spur of those farther mountains—the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was gold! I closed my eyes; for some moments visions of boundless wealth, and of the royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart my brain. But my heart ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consciousness that, although a betrothed bride, the young lady still was fancy free: not a bit in love. It was but a marriage of convenience, with mitigations. And so there hovered in my curiosity some little flicker of egotistic romance, which helped to rouse my spirits, and spur me on to action. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... feeling of unrest, that first told her Millville was mean, shabby, and an unfit place for an ambitious girl to try to exist in. Her very love for her mother and father, to say nothing of her affection for the other members of her family, seemed a spur to her ambition "to get away and ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... Consistory; with the title of Count Palatine and all the advantages attached to those dignities. His children were thereby raised to the rank of nobles of the empire, with all the honours appertaining to families with four generations of ancestors. He was also made Knight of the Golden Spur, with the right of entrance to court. This was great return for two portraits of a king, but it shows what a king could do ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... reality, the hog's back or ridge of a lofty spur of the mountains. Except for the vast bluish canyons and gorges far below, the view was somewhat restricted here, since towering summits, in a conclave of peaks, arose to ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... a leg and spur on each side of the horse to urge and to guide him, should ride without any whip at all if the horse has been subjected to the leg, so as to have the right hand as free for the reins as the left: there should be no such thing as "a bridle hand." ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... another word—Dill with the spur sticking in his skull, a regular cavalry spur, as big as a five-crown piece. He only turned up the whites of his eyes a little and looked sadly at his wife's picture, that she should have permitted such ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... moment, before we had time so much as to spur our horses, much less to draw sword, we were seized and pinioned by the men in spite of the rearing of the frightened steeds. Plainly it was not the first time they had handled men in that wise. Then, with a warrior on either side of us, we were hurried seaward; and I thought it best to hold ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... and over a spur of the mountain to the valley of the Yellowstone, which we followed up eight miles to our present camp. Along on our right in passing up the valley was a vast natural pile of basaltic rock, perpendicular, a part of which had been overthrown, ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... see the whole fight through without relying upon supports. The way in which junior officers and N.C.O.'s have acted upon their own initiative during some of this fighting has been beyond praise. The attack went through up to time. The supports had to come in parties organised in the dark on the spur of the moment. The Germans had several machine-guns going. But as another German officer told me, "This time they came on too thick. We might have held them in front, but they got in on one side of us; then we heard they were in on the other; then ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... a very shrewd game, Elizabeth. You want to wake me up. You're using the spur to make me work. I don't blame you for using the bluff, even if it's a rather cruel one. But, of course, it's impossible for you to be ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... and its blood; and, moreover, has particular to itself so many several sorts of sharp and wounding passions, and so dull a satiety attending it, as equal it to the severest penance. And we mistake if we think that these incommodities serve it for a spur and a seasoning to its sweetness (as in nature one contrary is quickened by another), or say, when we come to virtue, that like consequences and difficulties overwhelm and render it austere and inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly than ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... letter was lost, to make it plain that she was in danger of being taken for a Vestal and bid her father come quickly to interfere and her lover to ride fast to claim her in time. She enjoined both slaves to spur their horses, gave them money in case they needed to hire fresh ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... was guiding them. To her, the level prairie, rank with goldenrod, pink-flowered smartweed, and purple aster, was a land of wondrous growth. For twenty years her home had been an arid mesa far to the south, where her father captained the caretakers of a spur railroad track. The most western station-house in Texas, standing amid thorny mesquite, was her birthplace and that of her sister Marylyn; the grey plateau across which the embankment led was their playground; there they grew to womanhood under the careful guidance of their ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... these particular roads. Later on the trench tramway system, which already existed on the right, was improved and extended to the Essars sector, and eventually stores of all kinds were taken up each night to both sectors in that way, the trains being loaded up at "Speedwell Spur," near Fouquieres. The engine was taken off at Essars on the left, and at Le Quesnoy on the right, and from there the trucks were man-handled forward to ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... occasion, when devotees of various countries came to perform their worship at it, the people of those villages said to them, "Why do you not fly? The devotees whom we have seen hereabouts all fly"; and the strangers answered, on the spur of the moment, "Our wings are ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... own that I have never skirted the ravine at night without feeling a certain uneasiness; and I would not like to swear that on some stormy nights I have not given my horse a touch of the spur, in order to escape the more quickly from the disagreeable impression this neighbourhood ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... on the bare shoulder of a spur free from the small trees and undergrowth clothing the mountains the Deb Zimpun pointed to the roofs of the buildings in the little station a thousand feet below them ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... deep-glowing fervor of enthusiasm for what is highest and best is worth more to you, and to any man, than all that may be learned in colleges. If ambition is akin to pride, and therefore to folly, it is none the less a mighty spur to noble action; and where it is not found in youth, budding and blossoming like the leaves and flowers in spring, what promise is there of the ripe fruit which nourishes life? The love of excellence bears us up on the swift wing and ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... quality of our inner and outer life takes its tone from the things in which we find pleasure, from our standard of taste. If we are severe in our requirements, hard to please, and at least honest with ourselves, it will mean that a spur of continual dissatisfaction pricks us, in all we do, into habitual striving for an excellence which remains beyond our reach. But on the other hand we shall have to guard against that peevish fastidiousness ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... objectives were the Petit Bois and the Maedelsteed Spur, lying respectively to the west and the southwest of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... for this more hateful. I gave life, And I will take—if he, with shameless rage, Scandal the womb that bore him. Ye proud nobles Who war against my son, ye have no right To pillage him. What injury has he done To you? what duty violated? Ambition and low envy spur ye on: I, who begot him, have a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... their way in a southeasterly direction, following the edge of the woods, with the open country to the north and east of them. Presently they reached the "spur," as Tom called it, which seemed to consist of a little "cape" of woods, as one might say, sticking out eastward. They could shorten their path a trifle by cutting through here, and this they did, Roscoe (notwithstanding Tom's stolid self-confidence) watching ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... swayed about in his seat like a drunken man. Amid the blare of the band and the riders and chargers almost upon the struggling horse and motionless girl, lying on the tanbark, Broussard, coolly, as if he were on the parade ground, lifted Gamechick by the bridle, gave him a touch of the spur, and the next moment cleared both mare and girl, with twenty inches between Gamechick's iron-shod hind hoofs and ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... retain a spice of mystery in our mental food. It may constitute no part of the nutriment, and may often be deleterious, but it meets a want, somehow or other, and wants, however undefinable, must be recognized. It is a spur that titillates the absorbent surfaces and helps to keep them in action. It is a craving that the race is never going to outlive, and that will afford occupation and subsistence to a considerable class of its most intelligent and respectable ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... marvel that I have ridden after thee on the spur; so here is the tale shortly. Your backs were not turned on the walls of the Burg an hour, ere three of my riders brought in to me a man who said, and gave me tokens of his word being true, that he had fallen in with ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... not venture to bear his honors; his wife merely puts 'La Comtesse du Bruel' on her cards. The sometime playwright has the Order of Leopold, the Order of Isabella, the cross of Saint-Vladimir, second class, the Order of Civil Merit of Bavaria, the Papal Order of the Golden Spur,—all the lesser orders, in short, ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven't the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... each side of which is forty rods in length. The streets are more than a hundred feet wide, and are all unpaved. There is not a single sidewalk of brick, stone, or plank. The situation is well chosen, being directly at the foot of the southern slope of a spur which juts out from the main Wahsatch range. Less than twenty miles from the city, almost overshadowing it, are peaks which rise to the altitude of nearly twelve thousand feet, from which the snow of course never disappears. But during the summer months, when scarcely a shower falls ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... and the accompaniment was sparsely indicated by figures written above a bass. The recitative which separated one aria from another was improvised by the singer, and was accompanied on the harpsichord by the kapellmeister, who was naturally obliged to improvise his part on the spur of the moment, following the caprice of the singer. There was no creating an atmosphere for a tragic or dramatic situation by means of the accompaniment; as soon as the situation arrived, an aria was sung explaining ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... line of frontiers where the last settlers dwell, and where he may see the first labours of settlement, the mode of clearing the earth, in all their different appearances; where men are wholly left dependent on their native tempers, and on the spur of uncertain industry, which often fails when not sanctified by the efficacy of a few moral rules. There, remote from the power of example and check of shame, many families exhibit the most hideous parts of our society. They are a kind of forlorn hope, preceding by ten or ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... quondam gentleman highwayman, returns to take up the offices of the long-lost heir, Henry Morvan. Troubles thicken about him and along with them the romance develops. Through it all rides "The Lady of the Spur" with a briskness, charm, and mystery about her that give an unusual zest to the book from its very ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... headquarters then wuz the valley camp, It wuz down by the redwood way, With Chaparel across the spur, 'Bout fifty miles away. Wall, what I'm goin' to tell you, pard, Happened thar whar the trail runs into the sky; And if it hadn't a-bin fer Yosemite Jim, Wall, I'd be countin' my ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... hollyhocks made a gorgeous splash of color against the wall of the house beneath the end window. Four-o'clocks, ragged-robins and blue lark-spur struggled up through the cabbages and long grass of the little garden, to bid them welcome, and at the door they were met by the mistress of the house, who had heard ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... plight and proved that what she had conceived in an hour of discontent and executed on the spur of an envious instant could nevermore be undone. What had been planned to be mere temporary appropriation of an outfit of clothing—"to be returned in good order, reasonable wear and tear excepted"—was one thing; safe-breaking, with the theft of Heaven only knew what treasure, ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... there and then solemnly vowed and resolved that henceforward it should be the great object and aim of my life to demonstrate this to him to the point of positive conviction. "Yes," I exclaimed, springing to my feet with renewed hope, "I had already one incentive—my love for Inez—to spur me forward to great and noble achievements: I have now another—the justification of my dead mother's memory; and henceforward these shall be the twin stars to guide me onward in my career. 'For Love and Honour' shall be my motto; and, with these two for guerdon, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... 7% necessary to reduce poverty significantly. Privatization of government-owned copper mines relieved the government from covering mammoth losses generated by the industry and greatly improved the chances for copper mining to return to profitability and spur economic growth. However, low mineral prices have slowed the benefits of privatizing the mines and have reduced incentives for further private investment in the sector. Cooperation continues with international bodies on programs ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... national horizon. Let trade suffer as it might, there was nothing for it but to discard all new-fangled notions and to revert to the system which the usage of ages had sanctioned. The return was imperative. Failing what Junius stigmatised as the "spur of the Press," the right men in the right numbers were not to be procured. The wisdom of the nation was at fault. It could find ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... many acts remained and tentatively felt for their cigarette-cases. He saw George Oakleigh lean towards Barbara, glance at his watch and draw himself slowly to his feet. The movement was a signal and spur for a dozen others. Barbara moved into his place and called a greeting to Deganway who was on the opposite side; he stood up and bent over her, ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... taken led them along a high spur of the hill, past a small body of soldiers, some of whom called to them; but, not hearing what they said, they went on; when, coming to the extreme end of the spur, they saw a deep glen before them. Plunging into it, they quickly climbed up on the other side, when they again ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... case," said the cavalier, "I will not spare the spur. My nag up yonder at the town will be ready for the road in a trice, and thou mayst reckon on my being with Old Noll—thy General, I mean—in as short time as man and horse may consume betwixt Woodstock and Windsor, ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... no—your mistake. I only asked you if you'd read Sabrina's Uncle's Other Niece, and, as I made up the title on the spur of the moment, I should have been rather surprised if you had. He never wrote a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... persistence, felt not the inward spur which sought relief in speech, but Iris was compelled ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... philanthropic natures, certainly never in purely sentimental natures. I think its opening is made not by love but by hatred. A man may love God with all his heart, all his mind, and all his soul, without feeling the spur of fanaticism in his blood. But let him hate sin with only a part of his heart, mind, and soul, and he becomes a fanatic. His hatred will grow till it ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie
... go back to Watson and Miss Day," said Quarles. "Miss Day was silent on the question of love, fearful, I take it, that her natural repugnance to the man might serve to betray the conspiracy. I believe the conspiracy was formed on the spur of the moment, just before Watson came from behind the curtains that evening and asked whether you were a doctor. I should say the dead man had pestered her, and that she was relieved by his death. I find some confirmation of this in Watson's attitude. He talks of some ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... on his Indian mustang, that like a goat scrambles over the craggy track; for a moment or two he disappears, being hidden by a jutting rock; we hear him yell a sort of 'war-whoop,' awakening the echoes in the encircling hills; reckless of falling, we too spur on, dash round the splintered point, and slide rather than canter down a shelving bank, to reach a second sand-beach, over which the guide is galloping and shouting. We can see the fluttering garments of a girl, who ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... sunshine the place adds that of a peculiar beauty. The Apennines rise like a screen behind the amphitheatre of soft hills that enclose it—hills soft with olive woods, and dipping down into gardens of lemon and orange, and vineyards dotted with palms. An isolated spur juts out from the centre of the semicircle, and from summit to base of it tumbles the oddest of Italian towns, a strange mass of arches and churches and steep lanes, rushing down like a stone cataract to the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... accomplished. Two years have since elapsed. During that period the work has been pushed in every State and Territory and possession of the United States, and in every civilized country on the earth. The disappointments experienced and the obstacles encountered have but served to spur to renewed effort those who, from the inception of the movement, had determined to carry it ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... each chief[142] whose warriors rife, Are burning for the slaughter, Would let their volley, like fire to holly, Blaze on the usurping traitor. Full many a soldier arming, Is laggard in his spirit, E'er his blood the flag is warming Of the King that should inherit. He may be loon or coward, That spur scarce touch would nearly— The colours shew, he 's in a glow, Like the stubble of the barley. Onward, gallants! onward speed ye, Flower and bulwark of the Gael; Like your flag-silks be ye ruddy, Rosy-red, and do not quail. Fearless, artless, hawk-eyed, courteous, As your princely strain beseems, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... each. They seemed perfectly satisfied. It was the regulation amount; had I given more they would have clamoured for something additional. That afternoon we stopped for a long rest at a tiny, lonely inn, perched most picturesquely on a spur of the mountain. I sat in my chair while the coolies drank tea inside, and a number of children gathered about me, ready to run if I seemed dangerous. Finally one, taking his courage in both hands, presented me with the local substitute for candy,—raw ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... of the matter were that Alderman Keats had never before dared to fire the revolver, and that the infernal noise and the jar on his hand (which had held the weapon too loosely) had given him what is known in the Five Towns as a fearful start. He had offered to shoot on the spur of the moment, without due reflection, and he had fired as a woman might have fired. It was a piece of the most heavenly good fortune that he had put the bullet through the keyhole. Indeed, at first he was inclined to believe that ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, if it did not kindle, all around it. If you want the real philosophy of it, I will give it to you. The chance thought or expression struck the nervous centre of consciousness, as the rowel of a spur stings the flank of a racer. Away through all the telegraphic radiations of the nervous cords flashed the intelligence that the brain was kindling, and must be fed with something or other, or it would burn ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a spur of one of the mountains which had hitherto barred their vision, they found themselves suddenly face to face with a small band of Manganja men, whose woe-begone countenances told too eloquently that the hand of the destroyer had ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... tell the colonel the other day that what he needed was a brake instead of a spur in handling his bunch of ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... file they galloped along the path, until they found themselves by noon, at the foot of a spur of mountains that extended from the main coast range to the ocean. Jim regarded this barrier in their way with ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... to the right and giving him the spur, he sent him on a swift, zigzagging scramble up the smooth slope. A third rifle-shot echoed from the cliff, and was answered by a smaller weapon, much nearer, and, with his hair almost on end with excitement, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... But, in spite of that you must take him on my representation, and be gracious to him in spite of what he has done. You must be content to do that; or in quarrelling with him you must quarrel with me also." And it was done at the spur of the moment— without delay. She, who not five minutes since had been loudly condemning the unknown Englishman for his rudeness, had already pardoned him, now that he was known to be her friend; and had determined ...
— John Bull on the Guadalquivir from Tales from all Countries • Anthony Trollope
... individual workman in this system is kept life-long at the performance of some task quite petty in itself, and which he soon masters, and having mastered it has nothing more to do but to go on increasing his speed of hand under the spur of competition with his fellows, until he has become the perfect machine which it is his ultimate duty to become, since without attaining to that end he must die or become a pauper. You can well imagine how this glorious invention of division of labour, this complete destruction ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... a Soldier, and wrapt up in the Fruition of his Glory, whilst with an undesigned Sincerity they praised his noble and majestick Mien, his Affability, his Valour, Conduct, and Success in War. How must a Man have his Heart full-blown with Joy in such an Article of Glory as this? What a Spur and Encouragement still to proceed in those Steps which had already brought him to so pure a Taste of the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... they descried a range of lofty mountains printing the clear horizon, some of them evidently capped with snow. These they supposed to be the Bighorn Mountains, so called from the animal of that name, with which they abound. They are a spur of the great Rocky chain. The hill from whence Mr. Hunt had this prospect was, according to his computation, about two hundred and fifty miles from ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... action, hoisted at 1 P.M., was hauled down a half-hour later. Hood, who realised the conditions plainly visible, as well as the reasonable inferences therefrom, wished the order given for a general chase, which would have applied the spur of emulation to every captain present, without surrendering the hold that particular signals afford upon indiscreet movements. He bitterly censured the Admiral's failure to issue this command. Had it ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... was some stray farmer lost off his route," declared Fogg. "Why, that old spur has been rusting away for over five years, to my recollection. As to the old road beyond being a highway, that's nonsense. There's no thoroughfare beyond the end of the spur. The road ends at a dismantled, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... Carnegies on the wall, "there is Lord Hay's letter, and he is a . . . worthy gentleman. Perhaps I did not give him so much encouragement as he took, but that does not matter. This is a . . . serious decision, and ought not to be made on the spur of the moment. Will you let the messenger go with a note to say that an answer will be sent on Monday? You ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... have been in many a perilous place, I who sprang from the Swaying Stone to the point of the Trembling Spur, and missed my aim, but never, never in such a one as this. Agony took hold of me; a cold sweat burst from every pore. I could feel it running down my face like tears; my hair bristled upon my head. And below, in utter silence, Leo turned round ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... head like a horse at the touch of the spur. His eyes blazed defiantly at the Kapellmeister for a moment, and then the light went out of them as flame from a coal. The glass fell from his hand and lay shattered in fragments on the floor. He stood looking ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... very wrong at times: the doctor fumed like his little craters; growled out long-winded, exhaustive German imprecations: wouldn't even eat. Then again the demon of work would drive him with thong and spur: he would rush to his craters, to his laboratories, to his ledger for the purpose of entering unintelligible commentaries. He had some peculiar contrivance, like a misshapen retort, with which he collected gases from the craterlets. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... after, when we were entered upon, a desert of about fifteen or sixteen miles over, behold, by a cloud of dust they raised, we saw an enemy was at hand; and they were at hand indeed, for they came on upon the spur. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... consciousness, and her movement in sitting up recalled me to my duty. I ran to Sir Cyril, and, kneeling down so as to screen his body from her sight, I drew the dagger from its sheath, and began hastily, with such implements as I could contrive on the spur of the moment, to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the town was the step-father of Cole, the Oxford proctor: to this person, whose name was Master Wilkyns, the proctor had written a special letter, in addition to the commissary's circular; and the family connection acting as a spur to his natural activity, a coast guard had been set before Garret's arrival, to watch for him down the Avon banks, and along the Channel shore for fifteen miles. All the Friday night "the mayor, with the aldermen, and twenty of the council, had kept privy watch," and searched suspicious houses at ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Bohemia were destined to aid and assist the Russians in case they should be successful (and who can blame the Austrian Government for wishing to wash away the shame of the Treaty of Presburg?). Napoleon had not a moment to lose, but this activity required no spur; he had hastened the battle of Austerlitz to anticipate Prussia, and he now found it necessary to anticipate Russia in order to keep Austria in a state ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... is a miracle of man's wisdom and mankind's forbearance; it has not only been amassed and handed down, it has been suffered to be amassed and handed down; and surely in such consideration as this, its possessor should find only a new spur to activity and honour, that with all this power of service he should not prove unserviceable, and that this mass of treasure should return in benefits upon the race. If he had twenty, or thirty, or a hundred thousand at his banker's, or if all Yorkshire or all California were his to ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to stay, dad," she said, in a whisper. But the half-hearted invitation acted like a spur, and The Pilot was determined to ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... to-day. But to-morrow they may be strung upon some other and nobler purpose. These gigantic beings of which the engineer is the master and slave, are neither benevolent nor malignant. To-day they produce destruction, they are the slaves of the spur; to-morrow we hope they will bridge and carry and house and ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... and rested his chin on his hands. "Well, your haughty guest touched me with too sharp a spur, perhaps," he said, "but she was right. I do waste my life. I have been thinking of my mother. I believe she might not be pleased with me sometimes. And then I felt mad, and now I must do something to forget. So ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... who, on the spur of the moment, during the play, tries something else, is taking a course sure to deceive an intelligent partner, and one which will probably reduce the number of ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work
... sunrise evoked no merry jest at all." Dear Jones was an honest man, and would scorn to invent a merry jest on the spur of ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... a triple girdle of black battlemented walls, the town is built near Cape Apcheron, on the extreme spur of the Caucasian range. But am I in Persia or in Russia? In Russia undoubtedly, for Georgia is a Russian province; but we can still believe we are in Persia, for Baku has retained its Persian physiognomy. I visit a palace of the khans, a ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... speak of," he muttered. "He wrote asking permission to sketch the house, and my father refused—just why I don't know; some business matter had vexed him that day, I fancy, and he dashed off the refusal on the spur of the moment. But a man does not commit a terrible crime for so slight a cause.... Oh, if only my head would cease throbbing!... Do as you like. Bates, see that ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy |
