1 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.
2 They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with spruce and larch.
3 Some ragged little boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a white umbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters who came to dance.
4 Soon to the foregoing trees there became added an occasional birch or spruce fir, while in the dense undergrowth around their roots could be seen the blue iris and the yellow wood-tulip.
5 You ought to have planted silver poplars here by preference, and spruce firs, and perhaps limes, giving them some loam.
6 Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince.
7 They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.
David Copperfield By Charles DickensContext Highlight In CHAPTER 41. DORA'S AUNTS 8 A stable boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his hand, and followed them.
9 There was never anything so gallant, so spruce, so brilliant, and so well disposed as the two armies.
10 They were spruce, shining, waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides.
Les Misérables 5 By Victor HugoContext Highlight In BOOK 5: CHAPTER VI—THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER ... 11 For, instead of a long train with royal diadems, I saw in one family two fiddlers, three spruce courtiers, and an Italian prelate.
Gulliver's Travels 2 By Jonathan SwiftContext Highlight In PART 3: CHAPTER VIII. 12 And Colonel Mayhew, as spruce as ever.
13 Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street, past the bank and Michael Eady's new brick store and Lawyer Varnum's house with the two black Norway spruces at the gate.
14 They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars.
15 It was so dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head beside his shoulder.