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More "Spick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the room known as the library is on the ground floor in a wing of the main building. As rooms have a way of doing, it expresses unmistakably the character of its tenant. There is a book-case, with a few spick-and-span books standing in prim, cold rows behind the glass doors—which are always locked. The key is somewhere, no doubt. There are no pictures on the walls, save a fancy calendar—presented with the compliments of the ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... felt anything like the coarseness of those stockings as I drew them on. The shoes, too, were of the clumsiest make; they were large for me, which perhaps accounted for their extreme heaviness. I was a bit of a dandy; always priding myself upon my spick and span get-up. No doubt this made me critical, but certainly the tweed of which the clothes were made was the roughest thing of its kind I had ever handled. I got into them, however, without any comment, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... stairs he came in from the porch and met me on the landing, at the door of Miss Montmorency's best parlour— a spick-and-span apartment containing a cottage piano, some gilded furniture of the Second Empire fashion, a gaudy lithograph or two, and a carpet that had to be ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... these friezes is placed above a simple wainscot, the effect is charming. The paper for nurseries is usually waterproof, for a nursery must be absolutely spick and span. Another thing that gives much pleasure in a nursery is to build on one side of the room a platform about a yard wide and six inches high, and cover ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past; The town has got a better taste; I keep no antiquated stuff, But spick and span I have enough. Pray do but give me leave to show 'em; Here's Colley Cibber's birth-day poem. This ode you never yet have seen, By Stephen Duck,[19] upon the queen. Then here's a letter finely penned Against the Craftsman and his friend: It clearly shows that ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... recommence;—the play, Will be the last of seven, and spick-span new— 'Tis usual here that number to present. A dilettante did the piece invent, And dilettanti will enact it too. Excuse me, gentlemen; to me's assign'd, As ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... can get it; if not, one that will stand a thorough examination; and I don't know that such a boat's to be got just now it's wanted. There are plenty of ramshackle old things lying about here, but I want everything spick-and-span ready for the extra fitting out I shall give her. Copper-fastened, quick-sailing, roomy, and with good cabin accommodation so that we can have a big workshop for the men who help us, and a sort of study and museum ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... with what ceremony, you shall see. From the steamer the emigrant is led to a dealer in frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act; open the purse. From the hostelry at last to the steamship agent, where ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... neonatal [Med.], new-fashioned, new-fangled, new-fledged; of yesterday; just out, brand-new, up to date, up to the minute, with it, fashionable, in fashion; in, hip [Coll.]; vernal, renovated, sempervirent^, sempervirid^. fresh as a rose, fresh as a daisy, fresh as paint; spick and span. Adv. newly &c adj.; afresh, anew, lately, just now, only yesterday, the other day; latterly, of late. not long ago, a short time ago. Phr. di novello tutto par bello [It]; nullum est jam dictum quod non dictum est prius [Lat.]; una ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... decks was spick and span, and young Horatio gazed with wondering admiration at the neatness of the white decks continually scraped and holystoned until they fairly glistened in the sun, at the imposing size and length of the long lines of black cannon, ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... better. Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the blazing oak wood. Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her, making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots. About her throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf. The thought struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of decay, and that alone in the wreckage ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... Lillibridge's. The floor of the main room was bare and clean, and, in the middle, a round black stove radiated comfort on cold days. Along one side of the room ran three stalls, in which were placed tables for such patrons as might desire partial privacy. On the spick and span counter were set forth various condiments and plates of crackers. A card, tacked up on the wall, tempted the appetite with its list of ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... on the bottle of oil again. O for heaven's sake, pay him its price, dear boy; You'll get it for an obol, spick and span. ...
— The Frogs • Aristophanes
... long-sustained patience also, the essential monotony of military life, even on a campaign. Peril, good-luck, promotion, the grotesque hardships which leave them smart as ever, (as if, so others observe, dust and mire wouldn't hold on them, so "spick and span" they were, more especially on days of any exceptional risk or effort) the great confidence reposed in them at last; all is noted, till, with a little quiet pride, he records a gun-shot wound which keeps him a month alone ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of a fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... displayed in its especial place, and each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden as only a sailor can rig it, and there was a sea- going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained to stern-windows ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... ready for our trip. That will rest you. We'll get lunch at a tea-room, and shop all the afternoon. We'll go to a hotel for dinner, and stay all night. Then in the morning we can get up early, have our breakfast, and drive back here in time before the men come. Now isn't that perfectly spick-and-span for ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Spick and span, cap-a-pie, pictures of splendid young manhood, the two captains rode one afternoon up to the great gate before the mansion house of the nation. Lewis looked about him at scenes once familiar; but in the three years and a half ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... d'you expect me t' ride a spick an' span, over-fed, highly decorated critter like that? My! I ain't entered for a horse show, Cully. I want a pony that can run without thinkin' of takin' prizes on points. And a dandy saddle with fancy ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... it would be profanation to eat anything in this spick-and-span bower, so as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... with a laugh, "she sort o' got what she was wantin'. More'n she was lookin' for, I 'low. Seven o' them. An' all straight an' hearty. Ecod! sir, you never seed such a likely litter o' young uns. Spick an' span, ecod! from stem t' stern. Smellin' clean an' sweet; decks as white as snow; an' every nail an' knob polished 'til it made you blink t' see it. An' when I was down Thunder Arm way, last season, they ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... Something of impressiveness has recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in modern yellow and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... of scuppers by a little trough which ran all round the rim of the table, to catch any possible spillage. He was horrified to observe how inevitably callers came at the worst possible moment. Mr. and Mrs. Chow, for instance, drew up one afternoon in their spick-and-span coupe with their intolerably spotless only child sitting self-consciously beside them. Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers were just then filling the garden with horrid clamour. They had been quarrelling, and one had pushed the other two down the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... room is, where it hangs. It hung up fronting my old cobwebby folios and batter'd furniture (the fruit piece has resum'd its place) and was much better than a spick and span one. But if your room be very neat and your other pictures bright with gilt, it should be so too. I can't judge, not having seen: but my dingy study ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... flowers, despite her rubbing against the walls of the galleries when she enters to take shelter and, above all, despite the brushing which she must often give herself with her feet to dust herself and keep spick and span. Hence no doubt the need for that curious apparatus which no standing or moving upon ordinary surfaces could explain, as was said above, when we were wondering what the shifting, swaying, dangerous body might be ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... ran forward and to their satisfaction were helped into Mr. Atkinson's boat with Mr. and Mrs. Dallas and Bubbles as fellow-passengers, Bubbles grinning from ear to ear and looking very spick and span in a clean pink calico frock and a white apron. A string of blue beads adorned her neck; she had added it as a ...
— A Sweet Little Maid • Amy E. Blanchard
... This was a spick-and-span little world for a perpetual honeymoon, and at the entrance of the streets there should have been signs, Angela thought, saying, "No one but brides and grooms need apply." It was all distractingly ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... twopence a day. They grow gray in battle and victory, and after thirty years of bloody service, a young gentleman of fifteen, fresh from a preparatory school, who can scarcely read, and came but yesterday with a pinafore in to papa's dessert—such a young gentleman, I say, arrives in a spick-and-span red coat, and calmly takes the command over our veteran, who obeys him as if God and nature had ordained that so throughout ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... swarming with men in uniform—French, English, Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, colored French Colonials, a few Russians who, following the sudden collapse of their government, were now soldiers lacking a flag, Scotch Highlanders in their gaudy kilts, Japanese officers in spick uniforms not yet baptized in the mud of the trenches—a varied, colorful parade of young men bent on one great ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... tired with planning and thinking. It was out of his power; his fashionable life bore him far away from labour and thought. His work grew cold and colourless; and he betook himself with indifference to the reproduction of monotonous, well-worn forms. The eternally spick-and-span uniforms, and the so-to-speak buttoned-up faces of the government officials, soldiers, and statesmen, did not offer a wide field for his brush: it forgot how to render superb draperies and powerful emotion and passion. Of grouping, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... hawk's bill, his fangs or tusks like those of an overgrown brindled wild boar; his eyes were flaming like the jaws of hell, all covered with mortars interlaced with pestles, and nothing of his arms was to be seen but his clutches. His hutch, and that of the warren-cats his collaterals, was a long, spick-and-span new rack, a-top of which (as the mumper told us) some large stately mangers were fixed in the reverse. Over the chief seat was the picture of an old woman holding the case or scabbard of a sickle in her right hand, a pair of scales in her left, with spectacles ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... England' that kept the Empire safe while it was growing up. The guard of red-coated marines presented arms, and the hundreds of bluejackets were all in their places as the two commanders stepped on board. The naval officers on the quarter-deck were very spick and span in their black three-cornered hats, white wigs, long, bright blue, gold-laced coats, white waistcoats and breeches and stockings, and gold-buckled shoes. The idea of having naval uniforms of blue and white and gold—the same colours that are worn to-day—came from ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... traders ruined his digestion with too much champagne, and after several years he fell for the Gospel according to the Methodists, sent his people to church, and cleaned up the beach and the trading crowd so spick and span that he would not permit them to smoke a pipe out of doors on Sunday, and, fined one of the chief traders one hundred gold sovereigns for washing his schooner's decks on ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... of old, nor erred In substance, deeming that the life of man— (This is a new reflection, spick and span)— May be much influenced by the flight of birds. Our senate can no longer hold their house When culminates the evil star of grouse; And stoutest patriots will their shot-belts gird When first o'er stubble-field ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... and his habits in the use of his horses being fitful—sometimes, it would be midnight even, when he scoured from his home, seeking the comfort of desert as well as solitary places—it is not surprising if at times, going to the stable to saddle one, he should find its gear not in the spick-and-span condition alone to his mind. It might then well happen there was no one near to help him, and there be nothing for it but to put his own hands to the work: he was too just to rouse one who might be nowise to blame, or ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... off from hence twelve days ago accompanied by a cargo of Poesy directed to Mr. Hobhouse, all spick and span, and in MS.; you will see what it is like. I have given it to Master Southey, and he shall have more before I have done ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... eatables are all ready and found; and these two years that you've been there for your lessons, we've likewise effected at home a great saving in what would otherwise have been necessary for your eating and use. Something has been, it's true, economised; but you have further a liking for spick and span clothes. Besides, it's only through your being there to study, that you've come to know Mr. Hsueeh! that Mr. Hsueeh, who has even in one year given us so much pecuniary assistance as seventy and eighty taels! And ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... again a considerable squash in Noyon, and here St Andre was delighted to meet some spick-and-span young friends of his whom he affected to treat with great contempt, as not yet having seen a shot fired. Having to cross the railway line also delayed us still more, as a long supply-train was shunting and reshunting and keeping the ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... an old adage that "many hands make light work," and it is equally true that they turn off a lot of it, so at the end of half an hour the old peoples' wood pile was in apple pie order and the yard was in a spick and span condition. ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... given to boys of the Lower School who are too tall to wear with decency the short Eton jacket; he possessed a trouser-press; and his "bags" were perfectly creased and quite spotless. From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. Chaff provoked the solemn retort: "One should be well groomed." He spoke impersonally, considering it bad form to use for first person singular. Amongst the small boys he ranked as the Petronius of ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... steeple-crowned hat—look at the smug, mean, insignificant dwarf of a meeting-house, sinking up to its knees in a narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, with a trap-door of a mouth, and a grating cast of eye. How yonder bridegroom, just cemented in an alliance that will not last out his lease of life, "spick and span new," all eyes, and a double row of buttons ornamenting his latticed waistcoat, looks at his adored opposite, who holds her Venetian parasol—sun shade—before her face, glowing like a red brick wall in the sun. Ah! his regards are attracted by a modest little nymph of the grove, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... found a couple of merchant captains, one asleep with his head on the table and little rings shining in his great red ears; the other very spick and span—of what they called the new school then. His name was Williams—Captain Williams of the Lion, which he part owned; a man of some note for the dinners he gave on board his ship. His eyes sparkled blue and very round in a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... Manning's coming home again. Mrs. Kenney never let her tongue run riot more than in remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick and span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... climb ended abruptly in a level sandy road running among birch trees. At a wayside tea-house a man was sitting on a low table. He wore white trousers, a coat of cornflower shade and a Panama hat—all very spick and span. It was ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... with the life of the people of the Piano di Sorrento is the famous dance known as the Tarantella, which may be witnessed by the curious at almost any time—for money. Even when performed by professional dancers, tricked out in spick and span stage-peasant finery, the Tarantella is a most graceful exhibition of movement, although the dance naturally gains in interest when it takes place in the days of vintage or on the popular festivals of the Church, without the presence of largesse-giving strangers. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... damaged the countenances of his two previous owners, who had not the knack of preventing him tossing his head in their faces. The saddle—large and capacious—made on the principle of the impossibility of putting a round of beef upon a pudding plate—was "spick and span new," as was an enormous hunting-whip, whose iron-headed hammer he clenched in a way that would make the blood curdle in one's veins, to see such an instrument in the hands ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... an hour later the two girls, spick and span in their dainty dresses, and with fresh white bows on their hair, went together down the staircase. They found Mr. and Mrs. Farrington awaiting them, and soon Roger appeared, and they went to the dining-room for a ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... otherwise. Many vehicles came dashing down Tinplate Street: carriages, public and private, of every variety, from the rattletrap cab hired off the stand, or the decent coach from the livery stable, to the smart spick-and-span brougham, with its well-appointed horses and servants in neat livery. They all set down at the same door, and took up from it at any hour between midnight and dawn, waiting patiently in file in the wide street round the corner, till ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... along—it might put years on to his life to have a pull at the oars. You remember that old sailor we saw in charge of the engine back there at the government tank? You saw how he had the engine?—clean and bright as a new pin—everything spick-and-span and shipshape, and his hut fixed up like a ship's cabin. I believe he thinks he's at sea half his time, and shoving her through it, instead of pumping muddy water out of a hole in the baking scrubs for starving stock. Or maybe he ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... ripple when Eileen Lorimer walked into the ballroom that evening in the winsome attire of a Quaker maid, with Professor Hodgson, as Pierrot, on one side, and the tall, commanding figure of Peter the Brazen, in a spick-and-span white-and-gold uniform of the Pacific Mail Line, ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... style, in dainty ruffled frocks and necklaces and bright hair-ribbons, tripped gracefully in and advanced to meet Mrs. Morris, quite like grown ladies in their manners. Behind them came several boys, spick and span in fresh white linen waists and silk neckties ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... have only seven thousand apiece, but in China there has recently come a forward movement. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will flourish in China, as it has done in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. The Empress of China, after the siege ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... brought years before from New England; and how we brewed a waggish punch from the output of our rival's own distillery. You know how they were driven presently about our cleanly streets, every dooryard raked spick and span against their coming, and were brought at last to the mills. You know how the Red Jacket, pent to bursting from a providential thunder-storm of the night, blustered down through the race with the pride of a Danube; how the saws ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... again the Albanian coachman Shan, who had served me very faithfully on my previous visits. He took me to the house of his family. A striking contrast to the Montenegrin houses, it was spick and span and even pretty, for the Albanian has artistic instincts, whereas the Montenegrin has none. Left to ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... as quickly and decently as the place allowed of. Things were generally cleaned up, and by noon the little fort was as spick as if the sound of a rifle had never been heard within its walls. Lewis and Andover had the midday meal in a sort of gun-room which looked over the edge of the plateau to a valley in the hills. It had been arranged ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... forget the happy spick-and-span soldiers who sang as they stepped ashore from the troopships at Boulogne and Havre, eager to reach the fighting line. These men have fought valiantly, desperately, since then, but their spirits are as high as ever, and their ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... as spick and span as a new dollar, nattily dressed in a bifurcated riding skirt, from beneath which peeped a pair of ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... right-hand corner, the other eminent persons pictured being ex-Presidents Roosevelt, McKinley and Cleveland. The star illustration, however, is a "made up" picture, in which a photograph of Latta, looking spick-and-span, has been pasted onto what is very obviously a painted picture of a hall full of people in evening dress, all of them gazing at Latta, who stands upon the stage, dignified, suave, impressive, and all dressed-up ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... himself to the universe was in process of consummation. Physically, he had improved since his undergraduate days—he was still too thin but his shoulders had widened and his brunette face had lost the frightened look of his freshman year. He was secretly orderly and in person spick and span—his friends declared that they had never seen his hair rumpled. His nose was too sharp; his mouth was one of those unfortunate mirrors of mood inclined to droop perceptibly in moments of unhappiness, but his blue ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... voice; then in an aside for Schmucke's benefit—"Always have to say that!—Here, little one," he continued, addressing his Lolotte, "this is M. Schmucke, poor M. Pons' friend. He does not know where to go, and he would like to live with us. I told him that we were not very spick-and-span up here, that we lived on the sixth floor, and had only the garret to offer him; but it was no use, he ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... broad highway across all the thrifty and energetic bumps up to Veneration (who knows how much it had had to do with mixing them in one common tingle of mutual and unceasing activity?) and down again from ear to ear. Inside the poor little house you would find all spick and span, the old floor white and sanded, the few tins and the pewter spoons shining upon the shelf, the brick hearth and jambs aglow with fresh "redding," table and chairs set back in rectangular ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... you have a right to dictate in the matter; but I tell you what, these darkies o' yours are a dreadful lazy set, specially that Suse; and it's mighty hard for folks that's been used to seein' things done up spick and span and smart to put ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... himself lying in bed, with Squire Lavington sitting by him. There was real sorrow in the old man's face, 'Come to himself!' and a great joyful oath rolled out. 'The boldest rider of them all! I wouldn't have lost him for a dozen ready-made spick ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... luxe with a most de-luxey vengeance! Here were three tents, or rather three canvas houses, with wooden half-walls; and they were spick-and-span inside and out, and had glass windows in them and doors and matched wooden floors. The one that was a bedroom had gay Navajo blankets on the floor, and a stove in it, and a little bureau, and a washstand with white towels and ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... clean 'em," said Kitty Silver. "She say, she say she want 'em clean' up spick an' spang befo' Mista Sammerses git here to call an' see 'em." And she added morosely: "I ain't ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... hour later Drusie and Jim, having fed all the animals, were loitering on the sunny terrace together when Hal, looking very spick and span in a clean suit of flannels, came out with his bat ...
— A Tale of the Summer Holidays • G. Mockler
... was waiting for Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Fischer paused upon the threshold. Certainly, of all the people concerned, the two speculators themselves seemed the least moved by the excitement they were causing. Fischer was dressed with his usual spick-and-span neatness, and his appearance betrayed no sign of flurry or excitement. He ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... prose. Thus in prose we speak of "near and dear,'' "high and dry,'' "health and wealth.'' But the initial form of jingle is much more common—"safe and sound,'' "thick and thin,'' "weal or woe,'' "fair or foul,'' "spick and span,'' "fish, flesh, or fowl,'' "kith and kin.'' The poets of nearly all times and tongues have not been slow to seize upon the emphasis which ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... and dreary it was too, with heavy clouds drifting across the moon, almost hiding its brightness; and it grew so late, past twelve, we began to think Mr. Reynard suspected us, and would not come. But he did, looking so sleek and shiny, with his coat all spick and span, being freshly ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... de blackbird' nes', De baby love' his mamy's bres', An' raggy-tag, aw spick-an'-span, De ladies loves de ladies' man. I loves to roll my eyes to de ladies! I loves to sympathize wid de ladies! As long as eveh I knows sugah f'om san' I's bound to be ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... sitting in front of their spread-out goods like waste-paper merchants. I put in a request to be put back into my regiment, and they said to me, 'Take your damned hook, and get busy with it.' I lit on a sergeant, a little chap with airs, spick as a daisy, with a gold-rimmed spy-glass—eye-glasses with a tape on them. He was young, but being a re-enlisted soldier, he had the right not to go to the front. I said to him, 'Sergeant!' But he didn't hear me, being busy slanging a secretary—it's unfortunate, mon garcon,' he ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... too and wit; Two things that seldom fail to hit. 390 Valour's a mouse-trap, wit a gin, Which women oft are taken in. Then, HUDIBRAS, why should'st thou fear To be, that art a conqueror? Fortune th' audacious doth juvare, 395 But lets the timidous miscarry. Then while the honour thou hast got Is spick and span new, piping hot, Strike her up bravely, thou hadst best, And trust thy fortune with the rest. 400 Such thoughts as these the Knight did keep, More than his bangs or fleas, from sleep. And as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... They never gave him the same, and he could not get used to these 'spick-and-spandy' bedrooms with new furniture and grey-green carpets sprinkled all over with pink roses. He was wakeful and that wretched Habanera kept ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I wished they'd not delay. 'Twas a strain on the patience. I'd long wanted—an' I'd come far—t' see my godson. But bein' a bachelor-man I held my tongue for a bit: for, thinks I, they're washin' an' curlin' the child, an' they'll fetch un in when they're ready t' do so, all spick-an'-span an' polished like a door-knob, an' crowin', too, the little rooster! 'Twas a fair sight to see Mary Mull smilin' beyond the tea-pot. 'Twas good t' see what she had provided. Cod's-tongues an' bacon—with new ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... camp in a little more than three hours and found the adobe shack deserted. It was similar in size and construction to Las Vegas, but there all likeness ceased, for the interior was surprisingly comfortable and as spick-and-span as the Shoe-Bar line camp was cluttered and dirty. Everything was so immaculate, in fact, that Buck had a moment of hesitation about flicking his cigarette ashes on the floor, and banished his scruples mainly because he had never heard of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... a spick and span and eminently youthful-looking naval lieutenant raised his cap to the three folk who stood eagerly awaiting his approach at ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... are those gentlemen seated on the veranda, looking so spick and span in their white duck yachting caps and trousers, and keeping the waiters ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... for the wild Sea Rovers who gather at Cowes and Southampton. The Rover may always be recognised on shore—and, by-the-way, he stays ashore a good deal—for his nautical clothing is spick and span new, the rake of his glossy cap is unspeakably jaunty, and the dignity of his gesture when he scans the offing with a trusty telescope is without parallel in history. When the Rover walks, you observe a slight roll which no doubt is acquired during long experience ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... which it would be even harder to guess is that of the word spruce. We now use this word to describe a kind of leather, a kind of ginger beer, and a variety of the fir tree, and also in the same sense as "spick and span." The word used to be ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... down at a very clean table. I notice that those whom the Devil has made his own are always spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly polished. I sat down at it, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... his hand to the elderly woman who presided behind the nickel-plated American cash-register. The only thing that rang false about the place was that register, perked up there spick-span new. Hawkins insisted that it was a typewriter, and as we passed out he took a handful of matches (thinking them toothpicks) and asked the cashier to play a tune on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... conjoined with the care of the person. There is an excellent term for this, which, though borrowed from the stable, carries with it only sweet and wholesome suggestions. It is "well-groomed." A well-groomed woman is not only a well-gowned woman, but one who, like a favorite mare, is always spick and span in her person, and happy in her quiet consciousness of it. And every woman, whether she possesses a maid or not, indeed, whether she has fine gowns or not, may win the admiration of all her associates ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... do you Forsake your gayest hue And dress in viewless khaki spick and span? You charming little miss, It never can be this: To ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... stood fretfully debating, the door of the room again opened. There appeared an athletic, adventurous-looking officer in brilliant uniform who was smiling at something called after him from the antechamber. His blue coat was spick and span and very gay with double embroidery at the collar, coat-tails, and pockets. His white waistcoat and trousers were spotless; his netted sash of blue with its stars on the silver tassels had a look of studied elegance. The black three-cornered hat, broidered with gold, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ran to the brow of the bank. There, floating off their beach, was a freshly painted motor boat, its brasswork shining, and everything spick and span about it. A very commodious and handsome craft she was, with "Go-Ahead" painted on either side of her bow ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... a new sensation for me to be steaming down comfortably on a beautifully-kept steamer, as spick-and-span as a private yacht. Her captain and co-proprietor with Col. Brazil was Captain Macedo, a man who had spent much time in Europe, and was one of the most polished gentlemen I met ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... other, touching his cap, being in regular nautical rig now, as also was Teddy, who, clad in spick-and-span reefer costume, felt as proud ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... observed, he had noticed the altered style of the schoolmaster's costume; and it was to this transformation that his next speech alluded. "Why, Josh," said he, attempting an easy off-hand style of talk, "ye're bran new, spick span, from head to foot; ye look for all the world jest like one o' them ere cantin' critters o' preechers I often see prowlin' about Swampville. Durn it, man! what dodge air you up to now. You hain't got rileegun, ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... harbour as she next morning swept past them, outward bound, shortly after nine o'clock in the morning of a glorious April day. Jack was on the navigating bridge with Milsom, and as the beautiful little ship, looking as spick and span as though just fresh from the stocks, and with all her brasswork gleaming and flashing like burnished gold in the brilliant morning sunlight, brought the lighthouse abeam and gaily plunged her keen, shapely bows into the heart of the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... intelligent.... Walpole, in a fit of spleen, once called him 'a porcelain sphinx,' and the phrase sticks; but, indeed, there is more of the china-doll about him. He possesses the same too-perfect complexion, his blue eyes have the same spick-and-span vacuity; and the fact that the right orb is a trifle larger than its fellow gives his countenance, in repose, much the same expression of placid astonishment.... Very plump, very sleepy-looking, immaculate as ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... now crossed in a "coronet" over her head, she gave the ghost of a sigh. This morning she didn't want to wear her every-day bows; but dutifully she tied them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled into her checked gingham "sailor suit," all spick and span, Missy stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wishing her tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like Kitty Allen's. They come often to a "strange child"—these moments of vague longing to overhear one's self termed a "pretty child"—especially on ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Hetty Freeman was known as one of the best housekeepers in Brewster, and no one had ever seen her looking other than "spick and span," as her husband often admiringly declared. Rose always said that she could tell just what part of the big house Aunt Hetty was in because she could hear her starched skirts rattle; and she realized that Anne's untidy appearance was a real ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... to think that over," muttered Jack, as he drew on a spick-and-span uniform blouse. "I don't know whether there'll be any use in trying to find that mulatto. I haven't the least idea where his place is. Even if I found it, it's ten to one I wouldn't find ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... in response to the doctor's telephone message, stood over the iron bed in the spick-and-span men's ward of St. Mary's, a wave of that intense feeling he had experienced at the accident swept over him. The farmer's beard was overgrown, and the eyes looked up at him as from caverns of suffering below the bandage. They were shrewd eyes, however, and proved that Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... man. "My God! 'Sieur Mazaro, neider you, neider somebody helse s'all h'use de nem of me daughter. It is nod possib' dad you s'all spick him! I ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... for Edith, spick, span and debonair as always (although during the war he had discarded his buttonhole). He was occupied, as he usually was in his leisure time, not in playing the piano or composing, but—in making photograph frames! This was his hobby, and people often ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... their unnecessary overloading of themselves with tasks futile and fictitious; the determination to "appear" a little better than their neighbors, and, above all, to have their children (their one or two children) particularly spick and span; the long catalogue of folly into which our high-geared, modern civilization has led our women, and through no fault of theirs—"all these," said an eminent neurologist, in talking of this absorbing topic, "are impairing ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... crossed in a "coronet" over her head, she gave the ghost of a sigh. This morning she didn't want to wear her every-day bows; but dutifully she tied them on, a big brown cabbage above each ear. When she had scrambled into her checked gingham "sailor suit," all spick and span, Missy stood eying herself in the mirror for a wistful moment, wishing her tight braids might metamorphose into lovely, hanging curls like Kitty Allen's. They come often to a "strange child"—these moments of vague longing to overhear one's self ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... fruit, wine, and fresh meat; the skipper accepted and requited the kindness in suitable fashion. A few flagons of wine were drunk, and the interview ended. The company aboard the Golden Boar had no great opinion of their visitors, but the visitors had a better one of them. They had noted the spick and span order on shipboard, the bearing of the men, and they did not forget the name of the captain—they only made the mistake of confounding him with ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... and your mother have been at it with your scrubbing and dusting!" he said, as they came through the "living-room." "I don't know I ever did see the house so spick and span before!" His glance fell upon a few carnations in a vase, and he chuckled admiringly. "Flowers, too! So THAT'S what you coaxed that dollar and a half out o 'me ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... these were old acquaintances, eight or ten of his schoolmates. Little misses dressed in fine style, in dainty ruffled frocks and necklaces and bright hair-ribbons, tripped gracefully in and advanced to meet Mrs. Morris, quite like grown ladies in their manners. Behind them came several boys, spick and span in fresh white linen waists and silk neckties ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the narrow part of the whale just forward of the tail and then ordered the men to pull for the schooner. It was a tug, now I tell you! but we got the whale to the Sea Spell after a while. I expected to see the spick and span schooner all messed up with try-out works, and grease, and smoke. It disgusted me that the Yankee skipper should be so sharp after the Almighty Dollar. But I didn't ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... everybody's clothes. For himself Mr. Frog preferred a dark green suit, somewhat spotted, and a white waistcoat. And since he spent a great deal of his time in the water, his white waistcoat always looked very spick-and-span. Yes! Ferdinand Frog was an elegant person. And being somewhat shallow-brained, he was rather vain of his appearance, and was likely to snicker at other people if their clothes seemed to him ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the enemy. On the other side I was not long in finding out Tempest, with the glow of enthusiasm on his cheek as now and again he broke through the ruck and sent the ball into quarters. Wales, too, was there, spick and span as usual, playing neatly and effectively, and ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... my eyes with wonder to the amazing and crowded cluster of spires and towers: its antique air, and even look of shattered dilapidation showing that the restorer has not been at his work. There was no smugness or trimness, or spick-and-spanness, but an awful and reverent austerity. And with an antique appropriateness to its functions the Flemish women, crones and maidens, all in their becoming cashmere hoods, and cloaks, and neat frills, ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... said, "you are going the rounds. Verry's room beats all possessed, don't it? It is cleaned spick and span every three months. She calls it inaugurating the seasons. She is as queer as Dick's hatband. Have you any fine things ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... of this is found in the airy and well-lighted work-rooms, from which funnels and exhaust fans collect and carry off all dust, and improve the ventilation, so that in spite of the multitudinous operations in progress, the whole place is kept as "spick and span" as a ship of the line. But another aggressive sign of the firm's belief in the motto mens sana in corpore sano is the presence of a lady whose whole time is devoted to the physical culture of the girls. Trained in Swedish athletics, this lady and her assistant undertake the teaching, ...
— The Food of the Gods - A Popular Account of Cocoa • Brandon Head
... this 'ere 'Igh Churchism, as I could never make head nor tail of; and that, no doubt, has offended some o' the old-fashioned folk like me. But it's when they starts restoring the old churches, and makin' 'em all spick and span, that the religious feelin' seems to die out on 'em, and folks begins to stop goin'. You might as well be in a concert hall—the place full o' chairs and smellin' o' varnish enough to make you sick, and a lot o' lads in the chancel dressed up in white gowns, and suckin' sweets, ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Mrs. Kenney never let her tongue run riot more than in remembrances of you. Fanny expends herself in phrases that can only be justified by her romantic nature. Mary reserves a portion of your silk, not to be buried in (as the false nuncio asserts), but to make up spick and span into a bran-new gown to wear when you come. I am the same as when you knew me, almost to a surfeiting identity. This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized. The soul hath not her ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... pot or a kettle; they were to go, not to the armourer, and the draper, and the tailor, and the weaver, and the wheelwright, and the blacksmith,—but, hey presto! Master Warner set his imps a-churning, and turned ye out mail and tunic, worsted and wagon, kettle and pot, spick and span new, from his brewage of vapour and sea-coal. Oh, have I not heard enough of the sorcerer from my brother, who works in the Chepe for Master Stokton, the mercer!—and Master Stokton was one of the worshipful deputies ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the corpulent Whittaker as he left the train, spick and span in tweed and polished shoes appealed to Jerrard's sense of the ludicrous so acutely that the president, following the baggage-laden guide down to the shore of the lake, stopped and looked at his friend ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... to put his sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago—fellows tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November, when nothing but the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... hands of the watch "turned to" and scrubbed decks, scoured the gratings and companion-way ladders with sand and canvas, brass work was polished, paint work wiped down, and everything on board made as spick and span as ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... sedan-chair, all exhaling an atmosphere of old-time splendour and luxury. Something of impressiveness has recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... hut grew up as quick as thought, and it contained everything that they wanted. The man could not understand it; he could only walk about and wonder at it. Wherever he looked there was everything quite spick and span and ready for use: none in the whole village had a better house ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous
... ennobled as they emerged from the luscious, well fitting sleeves, and the high collar, with its narrow edge of lace, stressed the nobility of her fine head. When she came home from church, she did not, as she would have heretofore, change at once into calico, but protected by a spick and span white apron, kept on the best frock through dinner and, frequently, until chore time in the afternoon. In the winter, too, she was exposed less to sun and wind and her skin lost much of its weathered look. She took better care ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... a start. She had not observed the teacher's noiseless return to the room after conducting her pupils down the hall, and was astonished to find the stiff figure sitting in its accustomed place behind the desk which had once more been whisked into spick and span order for ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... one knew anything of her life before she came to Heathermuir; but the story went that her husband had gone away to foreign parts and never come back again, and that her temper was soured in consequence. Be that as it might, she was an excellent manager; everything at the Low Farm was in spick-and-span order, and fit for inspection at any time of the day. Maids and men alike knew that they must do their work, or Alison Shaw would demand the reason of any neglect or unpunctuality; and with those black eyes fixed ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... UP LIE , and a stationer's with LUE LACK INK. Isn't it distressing?—and so bad for growing children to see so much slovenliness. And what can foreigners think of us? The Americans, for instance, who are always so spick ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 25, 1919 • Various
... Henshaw were expected home the first of September. By the thirty-first of August the old Beacon Street homestead facing the Public Garden was in spick-and-span order, with Dong Ling in the basement hovering over a well-stocked larder, and Pete searching the rest of the house for a chair awry, or ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... may suppose, Was no great dandy in his clothes; Was seldom, save on Sundays, seen In calimanco, or nankeen; On anniversaries would try on A jerkin spick-span new from lion; Went bare for the most part, to be cool, And save the time of his Groom of the Stole; Besides, the smoke he had been in In Stygian gulf, had dyed his skin To a natural sable—a right hell-fit— That seem'd to careless eyes ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... tell how as a little girl she gave her roses not to the spick and span Madonna of the Church, but to the poor, dilapidated Virgin, "at our street-corner in a lonely niche," with the babe that had sat upon her knees broken off: or that passage, with its exquisite naivete, where ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... marches most majestically across the grass-plot in the quadrangle of his college, is summoned before the master, who had caught sight of him from the lodge-windows, and reprimanded. His gown is a spick-and-span new one, of orthodox length, and without a single rent; he caps every Master of Arts he meets; besides a few Bachelors, and gets into the gutter to give them the wall. He comes into chapel in his surplice, and sees it is not surplice-morning, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... She was as spick and span as a new dollar, nattily dressed in a bifurcated riding skirt, from beneath which peeped a pair of ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... would be profanation to eat anything in this spick-and-span bower, so as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose an adjournment," he ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 'tain't like it used to was in the old days. Most everything's done with the big guns now; and if they do get alongside to board, why, a man's cutlash is always stuck at the end of his rifle, just as if it was a jolly's bag'net growed out o' knowledge, and then it's all spick and spike." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... across rather slack surfaces of cheek and chin. In the interval between the hair and the face, Mr Holroyd should have a good supper downstairs with Foljambe and the cook. And tomorrow morning, when he met Hermy and Ursy, Georgie would be just as spick and span and young as ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... and harrowing accompaniments, in which woman's rights and demands were prominent. Then, on the fifth, they rested from their labors in the clean, soap- charged atmosphere—walking gingerly over spick and span carpets, laying each book and paper demurely in place, and gazing, at a proper distance, through diamond-bright windows; and on the sixth ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... conversation. As already observed, he had noticed the altered style of the schoolmaster's costume; and it was to this transformation that his next speech alluded. "Why, Josh," said he, attempting an easy off-hand style of talk, "ye're bran new, spick span, from head to foot; ye look for all the world jest like one o' them ere cantin' critters o' preechers I often see prowlin' about Swampville. Durn it, man! what dodge air you up to now. You hain't got ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... that the clerks disliked him. He hated humbug. He had come to India, almost forty years ago, not to make friends, but to make a fortune. And now the fortune was made, and the room behind him stood ready, spick and span, for the Scotsman who would take his chair to-morrow. Drawers had been emptied and dusted, loose papers and memoranda sorted and either burnt or arranged and docketed, ledgers entered up to the last item in his firm handwriting, and finally closed. ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the door opened again. All were genuinely surprised this time, for a prim, spick and ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... the coarseness of those stockings as I drew them on. The shoes, too, were of the clumsiest make; they were large for me, which perhaps accounted for their extreme heaviness. I was a bit of a dandy; always priding myself upon my spick and span get-up. No doubt this made me critical, but certainly the tweed of which the clothes were made was the roughest thing of its kind I had ever handled. I got into them, however, without any comment, only remarking, when my toilet was finished, that I could ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the scrub-woman had made her last trip with the extra dishes, and the little home was spick and span. ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the rest of them to Bower's, the river was stained with the sunset. Diogenes and the white duck breasted serenely the crimson surface. Certain old fishermen trailed belatedly up the bank. Others sat spick and span and ready for ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... we went. Cousin Dempster has made a good deal of money in Washington—contracting, or something—and he got a spick-span new open carriage for this high occasion—a carriage made soft as a bird's nest with brown satin cushions, and that glittered outside like a crow's back whenever ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... worry now. Who was this spick foreigner who ran hooting after her? It was not like Davidge to be either curious or suspicious. But love was beginning its usual hocus-pocus with character and turning a tired business man into ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the afternoon. We'll go to a hotel for dinner, and stay all night. Then in the morning we can get up early, have our breakfast, and drive back here in time before the men come. Now isn't that perfectly spick-and-span for a plan?" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... and almost at the Indian's feet, reclined a brawn of a man with his knees drawn high—a French sergeant in a spick-and-span white tunic with the badge of the Bearnais regiment. A musket lay across his thighs, so pointed that John looked straight down its barrel. Doubtless it was loaded: but John had plenty to distract his thoughts from such a trifle—in the heat, the glare, ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... eyes. "Still," he said demurely, "I trust you won't object to my giving you sixpence to carry my box to the carriage when it comes, and let the morality of this transaction devolve entirely upon me. Unless," he continued, even more gravely, as a spick and span brougham, drawn by two thoroughbreds, dashed out of the mist up to the platform, "unless you prefer to state the case to those two gentlemen"—pointing to the smart coachman and footman on the box—"and take THEIR opinion as to the propriety of my proceeding any further. ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... splendid physique, smart appearance, perfect order, method, and discipline of his troops. Madame Delbet admitted that this praise was fully justified, for the troops and horses were quite fresh, their uniforms and equipments were all spick and span, and the officers even ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... matter of fact, nothing the matter with it. It was as spick and span as paint and polish could make it. The curtain-stretching days were long past. There had even been talk of moving out of the house by the tracks, but at the last moment Mrs. Scaritt ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... it seemed, of a visitor, in all the neatness and show of a spick and span new uniform, caused a cessation of the game and its accompanying noise; but before a word was spoken, Sydney had taken in at a glance the dingy aspect of the place, and had time to consider whether ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... practical than its account of the purchase, conversion and enjoyment of the Ark Royal. The most prejudiced—again I speak personally—will find pleasure in the author's zestful story of how the dingy, foul-smelling Will Arding, full of cement (and worse things), was transformed into the spick-and-span Ark Royal, with a piano in the saloon and Queen Anne silver on the breakfast-table; while for the persuadable there are added plans, scales of expense and the like, which bring the whole matter to a working basis. The book, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... a comprehensive hand, and I, glancing round the transformed store, agreed with him. Everything was spick and span and mighty attractive—clean and neat-looking—with the new stock in the shining cases and arranged on the glistening white shelves: not all of it set out by any means, of course, but no unplaced goods in sight, cluttering up the ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... it. But I do long for the cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees—which we will set out—to cover them with a breadth of shadow. This spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too, for children to be born among us. The first-born child is still to come. And I shall never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Isn't it spick and span?" repeated Catherine, sitting down with precision in the arm-chair, discovered in ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... over," muttered Jack, as he drew on a spick-and-span uniform blouse. "I don't know whether there'll be any use in trying to find that mulatto. I haven't the least idea where his place is. Even if I found it, it's ten to one I wouldn't find ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... of the spick-and-span days of his wife, dead these twenty years, and sighed again. "I s'pose we might ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... opening out of the main road on the left as he faced towards Boisingham. This drive, which was some three hundred yards long, led up a rather sharp slope to his own place, Honham Cottage, or Molehill, as the villagers called it, a title calculated to give a keen impression of a neat spick and span red brick villa with a slate roof. In fact, however, it was nothing of the sort, being a building of the fifteenth century, as a glance at its massive flint walls was sufficient to show. In ancient times there had been a large Abbey at Boisingham, two ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... laughed. "You know very well he is not an ass, and I am not at all sure he is affected. I suppose it is the way he has been brought up. There is no saying what you might have been yourself if you had had nurses and people about you who always insisted on your turning out spick-and-span. Well, Easton, what have you been doing with yourself since we ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... again toward evening they began to laugh at seeing each other as spick and span and smart as on the day of a grand review. The commandant's hair did not look so gray as it was in the morning, and the captain had shaved, leaving only his mustache, which made him look as if he had a streak ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... magnificence was his wife. She was her own housekeeper, and employed, besides the coachman, whose business was in the stables and upon his box, five servants. There were twenty-five rooms in the palatial house, giving to each servant five to be kept in the spick-and-span array demanded by the master's position and taste. As a matter of course something was neglected in every department, the instinct of self-preservation being innate and cultivated in Abigail, Phyllis and Gretchen, "Jeems" and "Chawls." Even more as a matter of course, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... recently come a forward movement. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will flourish in China, as it has done in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. The Empress of China, ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... hatches on with spick-and-span white hatch covers, a broad white ribbon brightened the black side, and gold leaf bedizened the quarter badges besides gilding the rope scroll on the stern. The ship had been well painted up, a neat harbour furl put on the sails, ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... his folk to church, but we friendly slipped through his gates and reached the silent, spick-and-span house, with its trim barn, and a vast mound of copper-coloured wheat, piled in the sun between two mounds of golden chaff. Every one thumbed a sample of it and passed judgment—it must have been worth a few hundred golden sovereigns as it ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... the handsomest specimen. His hair looked so spick—his shoulders were so big and broad—his teeth so white—and his skin, well, Miss Carey, if you'd seen him, I'll bet you'd have just gone crazy to kiss him yourself. (MISS CAREY, who is drinking tea, nearly chokes on this—coughing on the tea which goes ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... In a spick and span blue-checked bungalow apron, she stood at her window just as Dawn swept a brush of partially-hued color across the eastern horizon. Having had it in her mind when she went to bed the night before to arise early, she had of course awakened long before it was ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... roughing it de luxe with a most de-luxey vengeance! Here were three tents, or rather three canvas houses, with wooden half walls; and they were spick-and-span inside and out, and had glass windows in them and doors and matched wooden floors. . . . The mess tent was provided with a table with a clean cloth to go over it, and there were china dishes and china cups and shiny knives, forks and spoons. . . . Bill was in ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... ease all the Countries to do't, And do our selves Pleasure and Profit to boot; For one that is crack'd in the Country before, In London will make a spick and span Whore. ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... frippery, where he is required to doff his baggy trousers and crimson cap, and put on a suit of linsey-woolsey and a hat of hispid felt: end of First Act; open the purse. From the dealer of frippery, spick and span from top to toe, he is taken to the hostelry, where he is detained a fortnight, sometimes a month, on the pretext of having to wait for the best steamer: end of Second Act; open the purse. From the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... then, dear maid, do you Forsake your gayest hue And dress in viewless khaki spick and span? You charming little miss, It never can be this: To render ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the little knots of people in the foyer. Beyond the fact that a large diamond sparkled on one of his plump fingers, and that his olive tinted face was curiously opposed to the whiteness of the uplifted hand, he differed in no essential from the hundreds of spick and span idlers who might be encountered at that hour in the west end of London. He had the physique and bearing of a man athletic in his youth but now over-indulgent. An astute tailor had managed to conceal the too rounded curves of the fourth decade by fashioning his garments skillfully. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... in our smart civilian clothing. We looked too soft, too clean, too spick-and-span. We did not feel that we belonged there. But in a whispered conversation we comforted ourselves with the assurance that if ever America took her rightful stand with the Allies, in six months after ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... his whim that everything entering into the construction of "Abraham" should be spick-and-span. He watched with his own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white paper being sliced down by the cutter into single sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid his hand upon the ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... We said nothing of Cary and his boat at the Inn, for we soon saw that both were far-and-away better than common, and we were selfish. Nor did the man himself seem to care for more patronage. He was always ready when we wished to go, and jumped from his spick-and-span deck to meet us with a smile that started us off in sunshine, no matter what the weather. And with my affection for the lovely, uneven coast and the seas that held it in their flashing fingers, grew my interest in the winning ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... to his desk and took a key from a box. "I'll show you your locker," he said; and presently Bonbright, minus his coat, was incased in the uniform of a laborer. Spick and span and new it was, and gave him a singularly uncomfortable feeling because of this fact. He wanted it grimed and daubed like the overalls of the men he saw about him. A boyish impulse to smear it moved him—but he was ashamed ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... were rows and rows of splendid full-rigged ships and barques lying moored in the Hooghly along the whole length of the Maidan. The line must have extended for two miles, and I never tired of looking at these beautiful vessels with their graceful lines and huge spars, all clean and spick and span with green and white paint, the ubiquitous Calcutta crows perched in serried ranks on their yards. To my mind a full-rigged ship is the most beautiful object man has ever devised, and when the dusk was falling, with every spar and ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... master was to be home that day. If the wind was favourable, he might arrive about two o'clock, but Rahal thought the boat would hardly manage it before three with the wind in her teeth, or it might be nearer four. The house was all ready for him, spick and span from roof to cellar and a dinner of the good things he particularly liked in careful preparation. And, after all, he came a ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and sanitary and spick and span—not a blade of grass out of place," was Polly's comment. "How do you ever manage it? I should not like to be a blade of grass on your land," she concluded, with ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... barn was a deep well, worked with a windlass and chain. During the preceding season a young orchard had been planted out in the space intervening between the house and the road. Everything about the place was kept in spick and span order. The tenant was fairly successful in his farming operations, and appeared to be holding his own with the world around him. He paid his rent promptly, and was on excellent terms with his landlord. He was, ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... room known as the library is on the ground floor in a wing of the main building. As rooms have a way of doing, it expresses unmistakably the character of its tenant. There is a book-case, with a few spick-and-span books standing in prim, cold rows behind the glass doors—which are always locked. The key is somewhere, no doubt. There are no pictures on the walls, save a fancy calendar—presented with the compliments ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... steel and brass twinkle and wink in bright and shining splendour. The ropes of the traces—the last touch of pride in perfection this, surely—are scrubbed and whitened. The whole battery is as spick and span, as complete and immaculate, as if it were waiting to walk into the arena at the Naval and Military Tournament. Such scrupulous perfection on active service sounds perhaps unnecessary or even extravagant. But ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable of a young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who had yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the Triton. It was real steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and dividend-seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... to be without other name, Betty went into the dressing-room and there washed pink and white faces and hands till they shone, and brushed silk locks till they lay straight and shining. Clean frocks were forthcoming, and two spick and span babies emerged to beam upon a transformed world no longer seen through a veil of tears. This new friend could tell the most wonderful stories, invent delightful games, and sing dozens of foolish little rhymes in a low ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... an' clean 'em," said Kitty Silver. "She say, she say she want 'em clean' up spick an' spang befo' Mista Sammerses git here to call an' see 'em." And she added morosely: "I ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... mother to daughter; and when this is the case, she is no doubt a valuable possession, and is consulted in all the momentous matters connected with the nursery. However, at the birth of the first baby, she is of course spick-and-span new; and in comes the dusky stranger, all pride and expectation, all hope and joy. It is fortunate that there is no difference in young babies—that the one is as ugly a little thing as the other—and so ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... Europeanized streets, and landed at a hotel of the same pattern. It is easy to forgive St. Petersburg, in its giddy youth of one hundred and seventy-five winters, for its Western features and comforts; but that Kieff, in its venerable maturity of a thousand summers, should be so spick and span with newness and reformation seemed at first utterly unpardonable. The inhabitants think otherwise, no doubt, and deplore the mediaeval hygienic conditions which render the town the most unhealthy in Europe, in the matter of the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... brain was tired with planning and thinking. It was out of his power; his fashionable life bore him far away from labour and thought. His work grew cold and colourless; and he betook himself with indifference to the reproduction of monotonous, well-worn forms. The eternally spick-and-span uniforms, and the so-to-speak buttoned-up faces of the government officials, soldiers, and statesmen, did not offer a wide field for his brush: it forgot how to render superb draperies and powerful emotion and passion. Of grouping, dramatic effect ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... best," said Polly, reassuringly, running off to get it out of the big bureau drawer. "It's all done up spick and span," drawing it out. "Mamsie, don't these Dutch women do ...
— Five Little Peppers Abroad • Margaret Sidney
... to-day—glowing, athwart its surrounding greenery, like the warm welcome of a friend; the exquisite neatness of the garden, where every flower that could be coaxed into growing in the open air bloomed in perfection; the spick-and-span brightness of the windows; the elegant order that prevailed within, from cellar to garret; the old, carefully-chosen furniture, which had for the most part been collected from other old-world homesteads; the artistic colouring of draperies and carpets—all combined to make Miss Wendover's ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... something in the air has stimulated everybody into being their nicest. It is surprising how quickly graciousness possesses some people when there is a witching girl around. Vivacious young men and benevolent officers have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, spick and span in white duck and their winningest smiles. Entertainments dovetail till there is barely time for change ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... paused upon the threshold. Certainly, of all the people concerned, the two speculators themselves seemed the least moved by the excitement they were causing. Fischer was dressed with his usual spick-and-span neatness, and his appearance betrayed no sign of flurry or excitement. He ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Mr. A. We are amiable too, For we follow our amiable Leader, like you; But when forced to say, "Bless you!" we choke with our spleen, And we add, sotto voce, "You know what I mean." While we sit spick and span as a picture by FRITH, And contend with our feelings, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... "It was a spick and span new one, bought on purpose for this interview. I admire your bookcases, said I. Can you tell me just ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... summoned to Omaha, much to Button's curiosity and disquiet. Mrs. Stannard, left temporarily widowed, was none the less radiant. A romance was unfolding right under her roof, and the heart of the woman was glad. Her patient was sitting up in spick and span uniform and a sunshiny parlor. Plainly furnished as were the frontier quarters of that day and generation, the room looked very bright and cosey this crisp December evening. Christmas had come and gone with but faint celebration, as compared with former years. There ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... entrance he roused himself, however, and begged him, when he should return for the dish, to restore neatness to the bed and to assist him in the ordering of his toilet which he wished to be spick and span. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... had always wanted,—a little cart with a real live pony in the shafts. And the pony was all dressed in new harness, spick and ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... entry which did duty for hall, and mounted the steep, narrow stairs with a lagging step. How brightly the afternoon sun had shone on Reggie, his fair, smooth hair, vivid necktie, the flower in his coat. How the brass harness had glittered, and Black Michael's satin coat had shone; how spick and span was Odgers, the groom, in his green and buff livery; what an air of wealth ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... excited that she couldn't eat her breakfast. But her chicks had no such trouble. And perhaps it was just as well that Henrietta Hen had her hands full looking after them and trying to keep them all under her eye, and spick-and-span for the journey. Otherwise she would have been in more of a flutter than ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... and caissons at the first uncritical glance looked like junk, but a second look revealed the error. Their metal work was battered and their paint chipped off, but the wheels and running-gear and the long gray barrels were clean and spick and span. ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... drawing his wages that day. Good to be a sailor, and have your money in a lump like that! Sally thought she would not altogether mind if he remained at sea for a time. He could save, and she could get on; and then they would both be happy, with a house somewhere, and a maid, and everything spick and span. No babies. Sally had taken that to heart, and she appreciated the value of old Perce's advice. A girl who wanted to get on did not need babies to drag her down. She ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... squash in Noyon, and here St Andre was delighted to meet some spick-and-span young friends of his whom he affected to treat with great contempt, as not yet having seen a shot fired. Having to cross the railway line also delayed us still more, as a long supply-train was shunting and reshunting ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... prosperity. Red-cheeked emissaries of butcher, baker, and grocer, order-book in hand, knocked cheerily at kitchen doors, and went smiling away; the ponies they drove were well fed and frisky, their carts spick and span. The church of the parish, an imposing edifice, dated only from a few years ago, and had cost its noble founder a sum of money which any church-going parishioner would have named to you with proper awe. The ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... have come sooner," she mourned, "before I was all dressed up so spick and span for your grand speechifying occasion? I always feel as if I ought to be fumigated when I come back from there. More than likely it's just another complaint that old Mrs. Donegan wants to lodge against the universe. She seems to think ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is the latest thing out; He's the rage of the season, they say, And wherever you wander, you'll find him about With his beautiful, dutiful way; He's as spick and as span as a dandified man. And his look is a heavenly joy; And however he does it, whatever his plan, We know he's the Santa Claus boy! He jumps out of bed in the morning himself, And he never lies still for the rest; He dresses in haste with the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... up to the rooms which had been Evadne's. They were kept very much as she was accustomed to have them, but there was that something of bareness about them, and a kind of spick-and-spanness conveying a sense of emptiness and desertion which strikes cold to the heart when it comes of the absence of someone dear. And Mr. Frayling felt the discomfort of it. The afternoon sunlight slanted across the little ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... place, and each could have been displayed in no better place. Paint and varnish seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden as only a sailor can rig it, and there was a sea- going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... reached his house and sat down to rest, he soon forgot his fright. For he had a very pleasant time licking himself clean. That was the way Sandy Chipmunk always made himself spick and span. And though there may be some people who would not consider such an act to be in the best of taste, Sandy Chipmunk thought what was left of the milk tasted very good. And since his mother did not object to what he was doing, perhaps ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Rose and me. We children have been busy all our lives trying to get educated, so we could keep mother in luxury after a while. In the meantime, she had done with bare necessities, for the life-insurance father left wasn't large enough to take any liberty with. Mother has things spick and span. No palace could be more beautifully kept than our home, but the furnishing is nothing ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... not visible from where he sat, and for a few seconds he thought he must surely be dreaming. She was attired in a neat navy-blue dress and smart blouse. Her white canvas shoes were replaced by strong leather boots. She was quite spick and span, ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Madam, how my little coquet heart fluttered with joy at the sight of a white lutestring, flowered with silver, scoured indeed, but passed on me for spick and span new, a Brussels lace cap, braited shoes, and the rest in proportion, all second-hand finery, and procured instantly for the occasion, by the diligence and industry of the good Mrs. Brown, who had already a chapman for me in the house, before whom my charms were to ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... at a rent of a thousand crowns, crammed with all the vulgar magnificence that money can buy, occupied the first floor of a fine old house between a courtyard and a garden. Everything was as spick-and-span as the beetles in an entomological case, for Crevel lived very ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... bear analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From her room in the shadows at the back the invalid heard the hammering and sawing, and suffered. W. H. Johnson came out with a spick-and-span window, and had his wife, a shrewd, quiet woman, and his daughter, a handsome, loud girl, to help him on Friday evenings. Men flocked in—even women, buying their husbands a sixpence-halfpenny tie. They could have bought a tie for four-three from James Houghton. But ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... tight to the fleece of their hostess, despite her rapid evolutions among the flowers, despite her rubbing against the walls of the galleries when she enters to take shelter and, above all, despite the brushing which she must often give herself with her feet to dust herself and keep spick and span. Hence no doubt the need for that curious apparatus which no standing or moving upon ordinary surfaces could explain, as was said above, when we were wondering what the shifting, swaying, dangerous ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Mayflower, so new, and strong, and spick, and span, and that rotting hulk which, for lack of custom now, was daily growing blacker and more worm-eaten! The old woman seemed to vision in the future a day when the Mayflower might drift ashore, cracked and water-logged, just as old Fleet-Foot had come home with her husband's corpse ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ended abruptly in a level sandy road running among birch trees. At a wayside tea-house a man was sitting on a low table. He wore white trousers, a coat of cornflower shade and a Panama hat—all very spick and span. It ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... thronged the alleys and swards. The men were negligible beside them. And they were not only fashionably and very fashionably attired—all their frocks and all their hats and all their parasols and all their boots were new, glittering, spick-and-span; were complex and expensive; not one feared the sun. The conception of what those innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the toil, stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the fatigue ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... not, indeed, a tidy housekeeper. The floor was dirty—very dirty—and was never slicked up from one week's end to another. But then, Solomon didn't mind. He was used to it. Mrs. Otus was just like his own mother in that respect; and it might have worried him a great deal to have to keep things spick and span after the way he had been brought up. Why, the beautiful white eggshell he hatched out of was dirty when he pipped it, and never in all his growing-up days did he see his mother or father really clean house. So it is no wonder he was rather shiftless and easy-going. Neither of them ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... scrubbed, and holystoned the decks and cleaned paintwork for an hour, after which the planks were thoroughly squeegeed and dried. Then all hands went to work to polish brasswork until eight bells, by which time the ship looked as spick and span as if she had been kept under a glass case, ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... Georgia sadly. "I've got one all beautifully spick and span, because I hate it so. I never feel at home in anything but a shirt-waist. Beside my neck looks awfully bony to me, but mother says it's no different from most people's. The men ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... after a month that personal cleanness and neatness in Germany were not particularly considered as next to godliness. The gold braid, spick and span uniforms and other showy gear, were apt to cover dirty bodies and soiled underwear. Alas, the Germans could not wash in beer. He wondered why his old enthusiastic mentor had never given him a hint of these ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... said Mr. Squincher, As in contemplative pose, He stood before the looking-glass And burnished up his nose, And brushed the dandruff from a span- Spick-splinter suit of clothes,— "Why, bless you, Mr. Squincher, You're ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... what I'll do," said Fred, getting anxious in his hankering after the mare, "I'll throw the harness into the bargain—spick and span new from Hamilton's. I paid eight pound ten for it not a month since. All the new fashion—brass fittings and brass haines. You could have the crests taken out, and new ones put in, for a few shillings; only send ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... for the evenin' performance on a special train—so they said they'd come. An' I've ordered an elegant coffin, the best they had in stock, with a floral piece from Sam Singer an' his squaw an' a piller o' white carnations with 'Mother' in violets—from you, understand? Everything the best, spick an' span an' no cost to the estate. Compliments o' Harley P. Hennage, Miss Donna." He paused and rubbed his hairy freckled hands together in an embarrassed manner. "I hope you won't think I'm actin' ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... came out again; Timmy Willie sat by his burrow warming his little fur coat and sniffing the smell of violets and spring grass. He had nearly forgotten his visit to town. When up the sandy path all spick and span with a brown leather bag came ...
— The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse • Beatrix Potter
... laughing: "it's something to be clean, even if you can't be president." She was not at all alarmed by Dorry's recent reaction in favor of personal adornment. He came down pretty soon, very spick and span in his best suit, and asked her to fasten the blue ribbon under his collar, which she did most obligingly; though he was very particular as to the size of the bows and length of the ends, and made her tie and retie more than once. She ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... to recommence;—the play, Will be the last of seven, and spick-span new— 'Tis usual here that number to present. A dilettante did the piece invent, And dilettanti will enact it too. Excuse me, gentlemen; to me's assign'd, As ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... aide-de-camp, simply, as he explained, to return the calls of the officers of the garrison, six or eight of whom had known enough to present themselves and pay their respects in person when he arrived in town. Braxton swelled with gratified pride at the general's praise of the spick-span condition of the parade, the walks, roads, and visible quarters. But it was the very first old-time garrison the new chief had ever seen, a splendid fighting record with the volunteers during the war, and the advantage of taking sides for ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... sense of justice permanently into a blue bag. There was Dr. Percival, the father of all them that cast the angle in Glen Conquhar, who now fished little in these degenerate days, but instead told tales of the great salmon of thirty years ago—fellows tremendous enough to make the spick-and-span rods of these days, with their finicking attachments, crack their joints even to think of holding the monsters. Chiefly and finally there was "Old Royle," who came in March, first of all the fishing clan, and lingered on till November, when nothing but the weathered birch-leaves ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... service, and the condition of the quarters as regards cleanliness, order, etc. Usually everyone except the guard, one cook, and others whose presence elsewhere can not be spared, are required to attend inspections, appearing in their best clothes, their arms and accouterments being shipshape and spick ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... saw a whole brigade, five or six thousand men, with their first-line transport, and two Generals with implacable eyes watching them for faults. It was a fine, very picturesque display of Imperial militancy, but too marvellously spick-and-span to produce any illusion of war. So far as I was concerned, its chief use was to furnish a real conception of numbers. I calculated that if the whole British Army passed before my eyes at the same brisk rate as that solitary and splendid brigade, I should have to ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... breath. 'There is nothing shabby or worn- out about it! It is entirely new,spick and span. Please, is my next lesson to go deeper than Prim's trunk, and take off ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... military than the Fenian camp. They were promptly halted and questioned by a picket before coming to the main body; the sentry knew enough not to shoot until he had asked for the countersign. Passing the picket, they came in full view of the Canadian force, the men of which looked very spick and span in uniforms which seemed painfully new in the clear light of the fair June morning. The guns, topped by a bristle of bayonets which glittered as the rising sun shone on them, were stacked with neat precision here and there. The men were preparing ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... fellow, producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff. Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... were there, too, their uniforms spick and span, and unspotted by the soil of the Andes. Mine was dirty, bloodstained, and not altogether free from rents. I rode carefully, but my eyes were heavy and my limbs ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... of fact, nothing the matter with it. It was as spick and span as paint and polish could make it. The curtain-stretching days were long past. There had even been talk of moving out of the house by the tracks, but at the last moment Mrs. ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... new-born, nascent, neonatal [Med.], new-fashioned, new-fangled, new-fledged; of yesterday; just out, brand-new, up to date, up to the minute, with it, fashionable, in fashion; in, hip [Coll.]; vernal, renovated, sempervirent^, sempervirid^. fresh as a rose, fresh as a daisy, fresh as paint; spick and span. Adv. newly &c adj.; afresh, anew, lately, just now, only yesterday, the other day; latterly, of late. not long ago, a short time ago. Phr. di novello tutto par bello [It]; nullum est jam dictum quod ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... main road on the left as he faced towards Boisingham. This drive, which was some three hundred yards long, led up a rather sharp slope to his own place, Honham Cottage, or Molehill, as the villagers called it, a title calculated to give a keen impression of a neat spick and span red brick villa with a slate roof. In fact, however, it was nothing of the sort, being a building of the fifteenth century, as a glance at its massive flint walls was sufficient to show. In ancient times there had been a large ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... Mr. Chevenix, the spick and span, had something on his mind, however, which he did not know how to put. He continued to reflect upon Mrs. Germain, but only by way of marking time. "She used to be very good fun in my young days. And she made things spin in Berkshire, they tell me. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... leggins. This niggur had no mind, comin' in naked, to gi' them thur joke at the Fort. I packed enough of the wolf-meat to last me up, an' I got there in less'n a week. Bill wur thur himself, an' 'ee all know Bill Bent. He know'd me. I wa'n't in the Fort a half an hour till I were spick-span in new buckskins, wi' a new rifle; an' that rifle wur ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... o'clock, one afternoon, we noticed an unusual clearing up of the village square. Military policemen were ordering away motor cars, wagons, and lorries, while everything in the square was made spick and span. About four-thirty, Sikhs, Beloochis, Pathans, and Ghurkas began to stroll into the square and congregate in groups, shaking hands with acquaintances they had not met for some time, just like typical Frenchmen. ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... sae great as they feared, and other folk thought for. The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad do with their auld enemies, and in special wi' Sir Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony great folks dipped in the same doings, to mak a spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed it a' ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, remained just the man he was. His revel was as loud, and his hall as weel lighted, as ever it had been, though maybe he lacked the fines ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... Red Butte camp in a little more than three hours and found the adobe shack deserted. It was similar in size and construction to Las Vegas, but there all likeness ceased, for the interior was surprisingly comfortable and as spick-and-span as the Shoe-Bar line camp was cluttered and dirty. Everything was so immaculate, in fact, that Buck had a moment of hesitation about flicking his cigarette ashes on the floor, and banished his scruples ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... drove into the courtyard of the solid old Flemish house—a house in which he and his father before him had lived, with tiny rooms full of old paintings, garden, stable, and hothouse packed close in the saving Belgian fashion, and all as spick and span and shining as if built yesterday—and then into the street again. It was interesting to watch this square little man roll sturdily along, throwing out his stout arms impatiently and flinging at ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... Universal, and his profession-leading us back to nature," I answered. Then, as we passed the spick and span concrete facade of the Patronal Church of St. Francis, with its rear of burned brick: "This is the direct descendent of the old Mission," I told him, "the first Parish Church of San Francisco. It was gutted by the fire and is being very gradually ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... used to was in the old days. Most everything's done with the big guns now; and if they do get alongside to board, why, a man's cutlash is always stuck at the end of his rifle, just as if it was a jolly's bag'net growed out o' knowledge, and then it's all spick and spike." ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... formidable voice; then in an aside for Schmucke's benefit—"Always have to say that!—Here, little one," he continued, addressing his Lolotte, "this is M. Schmucke, poor M. Pons' friend. He does not know where to go, and he would like to live with us. I told him that we were not very spick-and-span up here, that we lived on the sixth floor, and had only the garret to offer him; but it was no ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... projected and arranged by Mrs. Lillie, in strict counsel with her friend Mrs. Follingsbee, who had lived in Paris, and been to balls at the Tuileries. Of course, it was a tip-top New-York-Paris party, with all the new, fashionable, unspeakable crinkles and wrinkles, all the high, divine, spick and span new ways of doing things; which, however, like the Eleusinian mysteries, being in their very nature incommunicable except to the elect, must be ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... least, in respectable mud, Where the divers of Bathos lie drowned in a heap, And Southey's last Pan has pillowed his sleep; That Felo de se who, half drunk with his Malmsey, Walked out of his depth and was lost in a calm sea, 10 Singing "Glory to God" in a spick and span stanza, The like (since Tom Sternhold was choked) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... hours of the day. I stand in the open place, under its shadow, and lift my eyes with wonder to the amazing and crowded cluster of spires and towers: its antique air, and even look of shattered dilapidation showing that the restorer has not been at his work. There was no smugness or trimness, or spick-and-spanness, but an awful and reverent austerity. And with an antique appropriateness to its functions the Flemish women, crones and maidens, all in their becoming cashmere hoods, and cloaks, and neat frills, still hurry on to the old Dom. Near me rose the antique beffroi, from whose jaws ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... history. The town is built in the form of an amphitheatre, its lovely little bay surrounded by rich southern vegetation. The oleanders and magnolias in full bloom, gardens and vineyards, are no less strikingly contrasted with the barrenness and monotony that follows, than Banyuls itself, spick and span, brand-new, with the buried cities scattered on the way, ancient as Tyre and Sidon, and once as flourishing. There is much sadness yet poetic charm in the landscape sweeps of silvery-green olive or bluish salicornia against a pale-blue sky, dull-brown fishing villages bordering ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... only one; but they liked it well enough and fell in with his wish. He'd promised to eat his Christmas dinner along with them and Joey; but the pup was to come as a rare surprise next morning, and though Minnie Ford didn't much hold with a young dog about her spick and span home, she couldn't withstand the little silky creature, nor yet Teddy's wish to ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and just the man to keep the country ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... smart horse, and a buggy that was spick and span, and it was a pleasure to ride with him. He pulled up at the gate with a flourish, and told Pen to put his suit-case under the ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... suggesting, by its brightness and snapping, pine-knots full of pitch and resin. The front doors of the stove were open and the firelight danced across the room, filling it with cheer. It was one of those homelike kitchens where everything is spick and span, and the nickel on the stove ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... East Indies and China have only seven thousand apiece, but in China there has recently come a forward movement. A fund of twenty million dollars is to be spent in constructing a national system of telephone and telegraph. Peking is now pointing with wonder and delight to a new exchange, spick and span, with a couple of ten-thousand-wire switchboards. Others are being built in Canton, Hankow, and Tien-Tsin. Ultimately, the telephone will flourish in China, as it has done in the Chinese quarter in San Francisco. The Empress of China, after ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came forward ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... they went wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable of a young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who had yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the Triton. It was real steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and dividend-seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... table and washed the dishes, and had left the toy kitchen spick and span, the ten million lights in New York were lighted and casting their glow above the city. Tembarom sat down on the Adams chair before the window and took Little Ann on his knee. She was of the build which settles ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a Field Ambulance that had lost itself on the way to France. The chauffeurs (they had beautiful manners, and were very spick and span, and one pleased me by his remarkable resemblance to the editor of the English Review)—the chauffeurs wanted to know whether they had come to the right place. And of course they hardly had, if all the British ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... though he was, and the moon was shining so brightly in at the little window that at first he thought it was daylight. And when he looked round the kitchen, for he slept in a corner of it, he could scarce believe it wasn't, for it was all tidied up, the fire burning beautiful, and everything spick and span as his mother loved to have it. "Poor mother," thought Robin, "why has she got up so early? and how sound I must have been sleeping ...
— Miss Mouse and Her Boys • Mrs. Molesworth
... a very clean table. I notice that those whom the Devil has made his own are always spick and span, just as firemen who have to go into great furnaces have to keep all their gear highly polished. I sat down at it, and said again, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... of a wagon, and he looked and saw a very spick-and-span new wagon, painted red, with yellow and black stripes on it, and the wheels were flashing in ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... B. speedily finished his ablutions. I was strolling carelessly and solo from the cook-wagon toward one of the two tents—which protestingly housed some forty huddling Americans by night—holding in my hand an historic morceau de chocolat, when a spick, not to say span, gentleman in a suspiciously quiet French uniform allowed himself to be driven up to the bureau, by two neat soldiers with tin derbies, in a Renault whose painful cleanliness shamed ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... later the two girls, spick and span in their dainty dresses, and with fresh white bows on their hair, went together down the staircase. They found Mr. and Mrs. Farrington awaiting them, and soon Roger appeared, and they went to the dining-room for a ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... originals, yet unlike,—he was less gaudy, and a good deal dingier, than his Gallic prototypes are apt to be. Then he wore a burnoose,—the yellow, grimy-looking article of the Arab of the Soudan, not the spick and span Arab of the boulevard. Chief difference of all, his face was clean shaven,—and whoever saw an Algerian of Paris whose chiefest glory was not his well-trimmed moustache ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... who had now rejoined us, looking spick and span, and with his face shining from the fresh application of soap and water, "I believe they are all down there watching ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... that Depper—his name was William Kittle, a fact of which the neighbourhood made no practical use, which he himself only recalled with an effort—preferred to the dirt, untidiness and squalor of his own abode the spick-and-span cleanliness of Dinah Brome's. Small wonder that in this atmosphere of wholesomeness and comfort, he chose to spend the hours of the Sabbath during which the public-house was closed; and other hours. Small wonder, looking at the fine, capable figure of the woman, now bustling about with ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... seemed unfamiliar. I looked for the old tavern; I saw only the railroad restaurant. We went in to take breakfast, before driving out to the post of Fort Lowell, seven miles away. Everything seemed changed. Iced cantaloupe was served by a spick-span alert waiter; then, quail on toast. "Ice in Arizona?" It was like a dream, and I remarked to Jack, "This isn't the same Arizona we knew in '74," and then, "I don't believe I like it as well, either; all this luxury doesn't seem to ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... cubby hole that could not boast even The Anti-Vaccination Record, you were driven along a dirtier passage into a dirtiest room whose windows were obscured by generations of filth, and in that room sat a spick and span lawyer of great name who was probably an ex-president of the Incorporated Law Society. The offices of Smathe and Smathe corresponded with alarming closeness to Mr. Prohack's idea of what a bucket-shop might ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... engaged, not with mattock and death's head, but with spirit-level and measuring-cord. They were levelling a stretch of newly-turned and smoothed ground, and they pointed with pride to the portion of the work already accomplished, serried rows of spick-and-span headstones, all "plumb," as they explained, and freshly scraped—not a sign of caressing moss or a tendril of vine to be seen. A neat job, if there ever was one. We should have seen the yard before they had taken it in hand! There wasn't a stone that was straight, and the ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... that the Maid of the North, spick and span, with a new coat of paint on the outside, and a good stock of provisions and articles of trade in her hold, sailed out of Halifax Harbour and turned her prow to the northward on the first day of September, and was plowing her way to the Labrador at the very time that Bob Gray with ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... grammar had at school, long time ago, with 'Master Pinch, Grove House Academy,' inscribed in faultless writing on the fly-leaf! That whiff of russia leather, too, and all those rows on rows of volumes neatly ranged within—what happiness did they suggest! And in the window were the spick-and-span new works from London, with the title-pages, and sometimes even the first page of the first chapter, laid wide open; tempting unwary men to begin to read the book, and then, in the impossibility of turning ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... fitted out, spick and span in fresh carpets and paint, and crowded to the utmost capacity for comfort. Every stateroom was full; each seat at the tables occupied. Not a foot of space above or below decks was left unused, but provision was made for all, and ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and one of the campfires replenished, all six of the youngsters took the dishes down to the lake, carrying along two kettles of hot water, where a general dish-washing ensued. With so many to do the work, the camp was spick and span within ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... a pipe full of tobacco and a restful evening, however, restored him, especially as Shismakoff made his appearance all spick and span after his day's work on the water. The recital of his adventures with a school of whale in mid-ocean, and the capture of one of them, occupied a good share of the evening. Eyllen's father asked many questions relative to the subject. To these ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... Anglo-Sax. Brandwine. Middleman is a dialect form of Michaelmas (Chapter IX). We have the same change in tiddlebat for stickleback, a word which exemplifies another point in baby phonetics, viz. the loss of initial s-, as in the classic instance tummy. To this loss of s- we owe Pick for Spick (Chapter XXIII), Pink for Spink, a dialect word for the chaffinch, and, I think, Tout for Stout. The name Stacey is found as Tacey in old Notts registers. On the other hand, an inorganic s- is sometimes prefixed, as in Sturgess for the older Turgis. For the loss of s- we may ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... people, or for a dozen people to sit in—there was space for twenty. What oppressed them was the horrible sense of formality, the absence of life, colour, of anything but sure and solid security, the intrusive spick-and-spanness, the blatant cleanliness, the conscious odour of some sort of soap, used presumably for washing floors and walls, the whole crying atmosphere of incarceration. The barred window, the pictureless walls, the ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... his inquiries Nicholas turned up at Whitecliff on the following Sunday afternoon. To the immense astonishment of the master and mistress of that stuccoed mansion, Nickie was neat and clean, spick and span: he wore pince-nez glasses ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... Jack, regarding him closely, "it's Jemmy Hardy— grown up spick and span like the industrious little boys in the school-books. I heard you ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... working men's wives, and such women demand our admiration and respect. What matter though some of them are a bit frowsy and not over-clean? they have precious little time to attend to their personal adornment. I ask, who can fulfil all their duties and remain "spick-and-span"? ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... hand, and I, glancing round the transformed store, agreed with him. Everything was spick and span and mighty attractive—clean and neat-looking—with the new stock in the shining cases and arranged on the glistening white shelves: not all of it set out by any means, of course, but no unplaced goods in sight, cluttering up the counters ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... implied question: If Englishmen and Americans speak the same language, how in the world are we to tell them apart and keep them apart? Then again, since there has been a revolution resulting in governmental independence, what stands in the way of a complete independence, so that the spick and span new nation may go to the language tailors and be dressed in a new suit of parts of speech? "Let us seize the present moment," he cries, "and establish a national language as well as a national government." Never was there such a chance, he thinks, for clearing away the rubbish which ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... the Mayflower, so new, and strong, and spick, and span, and that rotting hulk which, for lack of custom now, was daily growing blacker and more worm-eaten! The old woman seemed to vision in the future a day when the Mayflower might drift ashore, cracked and water-logged, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thought that a young girl such as Miss Bessemer is—for she's very young—would have been a little embarrassed at running up against such a spick and span lot as we were. Not a bit of it; didn't lose her poise for a moment. She bowed to my sister and to me, as though from the top of a drag, by Jove! and as though she were fresh from Redfern and Virot. You know a girl that can manage herself ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... home from business to escort the travellers to the train. The trunks were packed, and everything was in readiness for their departure. Marjorie herself, in a spick-and- span pink gingham dress, a tan-colored travelling cloak, and a broad-brimmed white straw hat, stood in the hall saying good-bye to the other children. She carried Puff in her arm, and the sleepy, indifferent kitten cared little whither ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... the Marshall homestead. She had always loved the quaint, picturesque old place, so different from all the commonplace spick and span new houses of the prosperous valley. Judith had never been able to decide whether she really cared very much for Bruce Marshall or not, but she knew that she loved that rambling, cornery house of his, with the gable festooned with the real ivy that Bruce ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the eldest daughter, was one of those spick-and-span beings who look as if they ought always to be kept in a bandbox. She had a languishing die-away sort of air, and after a few moments' conversation with her, Bumble excused herself and slyly nudged Patty to come outside with her. She took her cousin ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... of old-time splendour and luxury. Something of impressiveness has recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in modern yellow and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... seemed to be kept somewhere out of sight, in constant readiness to obliterate stray finger-marks wherever any might become perceptible in Mr. Tartar's chambers. No man-of-war was ever kept more spick and span from careless touch. On this bright summer day, a neat awning was rigged over Mr. Tartar's flower-garden as only a sailor can rig it, and there was a sea- going air upon the whole effect, so delightfully complete, that the flower-garden might have appertained to stern-windows afloat, ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... pastry-cook's. To fancy they could live a year! I find you're but a stranger here. The Dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme. His way of writing now is past: The town has got a better taste. I keep no antiquated stuff; But spick and span I have enough. Pray, do but give me leave to show 'em: Here's Colley Cibber's birthday poem. This ode you never yet have seen, By Stephen Duck, upon the queen. Then here's a letter finely penned Against the Craftsman and his friend: It clearly shows that all reflection ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... again under the necessity of beginning the conversation. As already observed, he had noticed the altered style of the schoolmaster's costume; and it was to this transformation that his next speech alluded. "Why, Josh," said he, attempting an easy off-hand style of talk, "ye're bran new, spick span, from head to foot; ye look for all the world jest like one o' them ere cantin' critters o' preechers I often see prowlin' about Swampville. Durn it, man! what dodge air you up to now. You ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... fitting sleeves, and the high collar, with its narrow edge of lace, stressed the nobility of her fine head. When she came home from church, she did not, as she would have heretofore, change at once into calico, but protected by a spick and span white apron, kept on the best frock through dinner and, frequently, until chore time in the afternoon. In the winter, too, she was exposed less to sun and wind and her skin lost much of ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... shop all the afternoon. We'll go to a hotel for dinner, and stay all night. Then in the morning we can get up early, have our breakfast, and drive back here in time before the men come. Now isn't that perfectly spick-and-span for a plan?" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... Who was this spick foreigner who ran hooting after her? It was not like Davidge to be either curious or suspicious. But love was beginning its usual hocus-pocus with character and turning a tired business man ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... his butler! Yes, thought I, here's a chance—a vallit to ten thousand a year. Nothing to do but to shave him, and read his notes, and let my whiskers grow; to dress in spick and span black, and a clean shut per day; muffings every night in the housekeeper's room; the pick of the gals in the servants' hall; a chap to clean my boots for me, and my master's opera bone reglar once a week. I knew what ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and leather jackets, and with their enormous goggles on, the birdmen looked like anything but spick-and-span soldiers of Uncle Sam. But dress in the army has undergone a radical change. The "fuss and feathers" are gradually disappearing, and utility is the word. It was so in regard to the aviators. They were not hampered ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... polished and speckless, bits and stirrup-irons and chains and all the scraps of steel and brass twinkle and wink in bright and shining splendour. The ropes of the traces—the last touch of pride in perfection this, surely—are scrubbed and whitened. The whole battery is as spick and span, as complete and immaculate, as if it were waiting to walk into the arena at the Naval and Military Tournament. Such scrupulous perfection on active service sounds perhaps unnecessary or even extravagant. But the teams, remember, have been for weeks past luxuriating ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... stands; they jostled each other on the staircases; they thronged the alleys and swards. The men were negligible beside them. And they were not only fashionably and very fashionably attired—all their frocks and all their hats and all their parasols and all their boots were new, glittering, spick-and-span; were complex and expensive; not one feared the sun. The conception of what those innumerable chromatic toilettes had cost in the toil, stitch by stitch, of malodorous workrooms and in the fatigue of pale, industrious creatures was really formidable. But it could not detract ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... for mortifying persons in a small way; by a gesture, an expression, a look, cloaked too very often with all the character of profound deference. The old nobility of Spain delighted to address each other only by their names, when in the presence of a spick-and-span grandee; calling each other, "Infantado," "Sidonia," "Ossuna," and then turning round with the most distinguished consideration, and appealing to the Most Noble Marquis ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... went. Cousin Dempster has made a good deal of money in Washington—contracting, or something—and he got a spick-span new open carriage for this high occasion—a carriage made soft as a bird's nest with brown satin cushions, and that glittered outside like a crow's back ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... arrived in Jamaica, or since his trial. Calhoun was dressed in planter's costume, and the governor was in an officer's uniform. They were in striking contrast in face and figure—the governor long, lanky, ascetic in appearance, very intellectual save for the riotous mouth, and very spick and span—as though he had just stepped out of Almack's; while Calhoun was tough and virile, and with the air of a thorough outdoor man. There was in his face the firm fighting look of one who had done things and could tackle big affairs—and something more; ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... laughed Archie pointing toward the stairs down which a demure, spick and span, duck-clothed young lady was making her way with all the propriety of ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... being hung on the line, each implement used in the process of washing must be cleaned, dried, and put in its place, the laundry floor scrubbed, and everything made spick and span; then comes the sprinkling and rolling of the piles of snowy, sweet-smelling linen, all full of fresh air and sunshine, to make a little rest time after the vigorous exercise which precedes it. It must be done with care as ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... board shutters from the main pavilion—ominous reminder of the fast approaching season. Soon scouts would be tumbling all over each other hereabouts. The springboard had been put in place at the lake's edge, too, and a couple of freshly painted rowboats were bobbing at the float, looking spick and glossy in the dying sunlight. Temple Camp was beginning to look natural ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... way of her sex, to make the fire burn better. Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the blazing oak wood. Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her, making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots. About her throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf. The thought struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... tidy officers who so love to see a ship kept spick and span clean; who institute vigorous search after the man who chances to drop the crumb of a biscuit on deck, when the ship is rolling in a sea-way; let all such swing their hammocks with the sailors; and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... foregoing, one chief aim in the building of my house beautiful will be to have a house that will require the minimum of trouble and work to keep clean and orderly. It will be no spick and span and polished house, with an immaculateness that testifies to the tragedy of drudge. I live in California where the days are warm. I'd prefer that the servants had three hours to go swimming (or hammocking) ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... laces mended, axes sharpened, "Billys" polished and made to shine like new tin, and a hundred and one things to be done. At last, however—although it seemed that it would never come—the eventful Monday arrived, as eventful days of all kinds have a habit of doing; and the Eagle Patrol, spick and span and shining from tan boots to campaign hats, fell in line behind the band. Proudly they paraded up the street, with their green and black Eagle Patrol sign fluttering gallantly in ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... wearisome to him. His brain was tired with planning and thinking. It was out of his power; his fashionable life bore him far away from labour and thought. His work grew cold and colourless; and he betook himself with indifference to the reproduction of monotonous, well-worn forms. The eternally spick-and-span uniforms, and the so-to-speak buttoned-up faces of the government officials, soldiers, and statesmen, did not offer a wide field for his brush: it forgot how to render superb draperies and powerful emotion and passion. Of grouping, dramatic ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... improved upon Fuji's invention of scuppers by a little trough which ran all round the rim of the table, to catch any possible spillage. He was horrified to observe how inevitably callers came at the worst possible moment. Mr. and Mrs. Chow, for instance, drew up one afternoon in their spick-and-span coupe with their intolerably spotless only child sitting self-consciously beside them. Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers were just then filling the garden with horrid clamour. They had been quarrelling, ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Baby, who seemed to be without other name, Betty went into the dressing-room and there washed pink and white faces and hands till they shone, and brushed silk locks till they lay straight and shining. Clean frocks were forthcoming, and two spick and span babies emerged to beam upon a transformed world no longer seen through a veil of tears. This new friend could tell the most wonderful stories, invent delightful games, and sing dozens of foolish little rhymes in a low sweet voice that disturbed ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... old adage that "many hands make light work," and it is equally true that they turn off a lot of it, so at the end of half an hour the old peoples' wood pile was in apple pie order and the yard was in a spick and span condition. ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... coat of the Upper School mercifully given to boys of the Lower School who are too tall to wear with decency the short Eton jacket; he possessed a trouser-press; and his "bags" were perfectly creased and quite spotless. From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. Chaff provoked the solemn retort: "One should be well groomed." He spoke impersonally, considering it bad form to use for first person singular. Amongst the small boys he ranked as the Petronius ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... obviously excited by the music, shouted "A-more! A-more!" so we went on, disregarding Whinnie and the bunk-house window and Struthers' acrid stare from the shack-door. I was in the middle of Fay Templeton's lovely old Rosie, You Are My Posey, when Lady Alicia rode up, as spick and span as though she'd just pranced off Rotten Row. And as I'd no intention of showing the white feather to her ladyship, I kept right on to the end. Then I looked up and waved the banjo at her where she ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... bloody service, a young gentleman of fifteen, fresh from a preparatory school, who can scarcely read, and came but yesterday with a pinafore in to papa's dessert—such a young gentleman, I say, arrives in a spick-and-span red coat, and calmly takes the command over our veteran, who obeys him as if God and nature had ordained that so throughout ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old man. "My God! 'Sieur Mazaro, neider you, neider somebody helse s'all h'use de nem of me daughter. It is nod possib' dad you s'all spick him! ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... A. We are amiable too, For we follow our amiable Leader, like you; But when forced to say, "Bless you!" we choke with our spleen, And we add, sotto voce, "You know what I mean." While we sit spick and span as a picture by FRITH, And contend with our feelings, to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 1, 1891 • Various
... appurtenances. All these I put away together in my mattress, where I also kept the strips of linen I had made. When day broke, I used immediately to sweep my room out; and though I am by nature a lover of cleanliness, at that time I kept myself unusually spick and span. After sweeping up, I made my bed as daintily as I could, laying flowers upon it, which a Savoyard used to bring me nearly every morning. He had the care of the cistern and the casks, and also amused himself with carpentering; ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... leaving no room for doubt as to its existence. There it stood, spick and span, with white window-curtains tied up with red ribbons, and rows of flower-pots on the sills, and a shining brass handle and knocker on the door, and a dark blind in the shop window through which, howsoever noses might be flattened against the glass, nothing could be ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
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