"Spick" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Holroyd's thumb 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 ever, if not ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... 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 ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... contrast between 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, just as old Fleet-Foot had come home ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 modern yellow and ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... 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 really ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... to a desert of mud, on which the young Arabs—shoeless, stockingless—are disporting themselves. It is low water, and the river steamers keep towards the middle arches of Waterloo. Up aloft the Hungerford Suspension rears itself in mid air, and that spick-and-span new bridge, across which trains run now ceaselessly, has not yet been projected. It is a bright spring day. The sunshine falls upon the buildings on the Surrey side, and lights them with a picturesque beauty to which they have not the slightest title. A barge, laden with ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... 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 personality that seemed to combine something ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... uncomfortable 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 the event, hundreds of thousands of American boys would be ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... 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, but it was apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... any moment," Henrietta told them. She was so 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 ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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
... native rig'mint shrieking blue murther. Ye niver heard the like. There was men cryin' like women that did - an' faith I do not blame thim. Fwhat bruk me down was the Lancers' Band - shinin' an' spick like angels, wid the ould dhrum-horse at the head an' the silver kettle-dhrums an' all an' all, waitin' for their men that was behind us. They shtruck up the Cavalry Canter, an', begad, those poor ghosts that had not a sound fut in a throop ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... 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
... the state of things when the three girls arrived at the Merrimans'. The house had truly been swept and garnished. The room where Jane had been ill was re-papered and painted, the place looked spick-and-span and beautiful, and Mrs. Merriman came out with a smiling face to welcome the arrival of the party from ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... sense. To "live a full and varied life," if the experience derived from it is to have expression in the drama, is only to have the richer resource in "remarks about morals." If this is perverted under any self- conscious notion of doing something spick-and-span new in the way of character and plot, alien to all the old conceptions, then we know our writers set themselves boldly at loggerheads with certain old-fashioned and yet older new-fashioned laws, which forbid the violation of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... such a beautiful spick and span! And I am only fit to go into the pond. Oh, Mary, what a shame of me to take advantage ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... 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
... 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
... 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. ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... little water for personal use. 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 my recent efforts. This must be a general at least, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... 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 ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... 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 ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... look of antiquity, which is particularly pleasant in a land where almost everything is spick-and-span new; but the rooms I thought low and stuffy, and the walls and passages had a neglected plaster-broken appearance. There are some very fine old trees in the green, which, throwing their shade over the time-worn building, help to give it a venerable ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... neglected; 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 send a maid to fetch him from field or barn, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... all the next day, he planned for it exultantly. He was to have the chance which the ungrateful Austin had seen fit to cast away. He would show Sylvia how much he appreciated it. Through the long afternoon, suddenly grown unseasonably warm, he toiled on the motor until it was spick and span from top to bottom and from end to end. He was careful to start his labors early enough to allow a full hour to dress before supper, cautioned his mother a dozen times to be sure there was enough hot water left in the boiler ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... 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 ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... himself. So, wearing always the whitest of doublets and a spotless apron, that denoted rather the miller, than the baker, he let bring, every morning about the hour that he expected Messer Geri and the ambassadors to pass by his door, a spick-and-span bucket of fresh and cool spring water, and a small Bolognese flagon of his good white wine, and two beakers that shone like silver, so bright were they: and there down he sat him, as they came by, and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... nearer three than four o'clock when the expedition for Cherbourg left the door of her town-house and Paris by way of the Porte de Neuilly; the limousine leading with that polished pattern of a chauffeur, Jules, at its wheel, as spick and span, firm of jaw and imperturbable of eye as when Lanyard had first noticed him in Nant; the touring car trailing, with the footman Leon as driver, and not at all happy to find himself drafted in that capacity, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... very different from the Mrs. Braiding of 1914, a shameless creature of more rounded contours than of old, and not quite so spick and span as of old. She was carrying in her arms that which before the war she could not have conceived herself as carrying. The being was invisible in wraps, but it was there; and she seemed to have no ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... after his hot journey, instinctively they turned their steps to the excavation. Things had certainly advanced greatly during Michael's absence. The deep shaft was almost cleared of rubbish; the site was tidied up and in spick-and-span order. ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... this case Latta merely takes for himself the upper 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
... far too proud to be hired to work in a house. Why, the best folks in town mostly does their own work; there's Mrs. Reid, so rich, just has a woman to do the charing; and Eelan—that's the beauty, you know—makes the pies and keeps the house spick-and-span. But you couldn't keep your own house clean, could you, sir?—let alone the meals; and you wouldn't live ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... braids, 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 ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... 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 the great ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... were buried 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 and furnished by a former commandant who found ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... 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, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... no longer dusty and grimy; quite spick and span, on the contrary; so freshly and prettily dressed, indeed, that the thought will occur to me that it is a pity there are not more people to see me. However, no doubt some one will turn up by-and-by. The weather is serenely, evenly fine. It seems as if no rain ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... come and scrub; we pulled out pots and pans, stove-polish and dish-towels, napkins and odd stockings missed from the wash; we cleared every corner, and had every box and bottle washed; then we left everything below spick and span, so that it almost tempted us to stay even there, and sent for the sheet-iron man, and had the stove taken up stairs. We only carried up such lesser movables as we knew we should want; we left all the accumulation behind; we resolved ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... 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 no one and yet allowed ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... range, 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 ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... him, brought him back the next day. I happened to be there at the time. So did our spick and span lieutenant. The man who had been caught—or boy, rather, for he was but that—was anything but spick and span. His clothes were torn and muddy, his face dirty and bloody—it had been scratched by something. He knew what he was in for. Court martial and imprisonment ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... was Chrissie's verdict; then her eyes passed on to her handsome, stalwart father, and a twinkle of amusement showed in her eyes. "They both do! And so spick and span—everything new from head to foot. They might be a newly-married couple—a trifle elderly, but ve-ry well preserved! I shouldn't wonder if people thought they were. How would it be if we hid ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... strengthened her notion of remaining on the planet. Van Emmon, watching her narrowly, saw her give the room an appraising glance which meant, plain as day, "I'd like to keep this place in spick and span condition!" And another, not so easy to interpret: "I'd like to show these people a thing or two about designing houses!" And the geologist's heart sank ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... by the efforts of the sailors from the destroyer—had now almost cleared away, and we went forward to the galley. The fire had not spread to that, and after the scenes of blood and violence astern and in the cabin the place looked refreshingly spick and span; there was, indeed, an unusual air of neatness and cleanliness about it. The various pots and pans shone gaily in the sun's glittering lights; every utensil was in its place; evidently the galley's controlling spirit had been a meticulously careful person ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... mistake in the house this time. There was Gregson—now spick and span in his maroon livery—haughtily mounting guard over the open doorway while a belated scrubwoman was cleaning ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... 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. Hseh! that Mr. Hseh, who has even in one year given us so much pecuniary assistance as seventy and eighty taels! And now you would go and raise a row in this school-room! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... A spick-and-span Tommy, with very wet hair and a nervous smile; a Tommy with cold hands and a curious twitching behind his knees. For he had come to ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... 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 since he had seen ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... According to some Kai, before the ghosts are admitted to ghost land they must swing to and fro on a rope and then drop into water, where they are washed clean of bloodstains and all impurity; after which they ascend, spick and span, the last slope to ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... 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 dilettante to ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... them are quite spick and span with their polished silk hats, and there are any number of pretty girls. The shops, too, seem quite attractive. I can even imagine myself living here for a ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... thought very striking. Like every young man of twenty, I was on the look-out for something to set up that would do duty for an ideal. The world was to me, at this time, what a toy-shop had been fifteen years before: everything was spick and span, and every illusion was set out straight and smart in new paint and gilding. But Julien kept me at a distance, and the rare occasions when he favoured me with his society only served to prepare my mind for the friendship which awaited me, and which was destined to absorb ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... 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
... both being merely stunned, as was Mr. Damon. They looked about in wonder, and then, feeling that they were prisoners, resigned themselves to their fate. Both men were shabbily dressed, and Tom would hardly have known the once spick and span Mr. Peters. He had no rose in ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... 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[obs3], sempervirid[obs3]. 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 ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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 ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... over the crowd in the big room. Outside, the depot 'bus had just stopped in front of the hotel and a company of newly arrived guests were entering the corridor, while the bell-boys were running forward to relieve them of their luggage and lead them to the spick-and-span clerk behind the register. ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... 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 good lathery ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... visitors that her surroundings had not the spick-and-span appearance which usually characterises a Scottish Mission station. She had, nevertheless, a real appreciation of order and beauty, and liked to have everything clean and tidy about her. How to accomplish this was her daily problem, and perhaps only those who ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... twenty-fifth year—about three in the afternoon, by the clock, October Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five. The day was Indian summer, warm and balmy. He sat there reading in the window of his office on Court Street, Boston, a spick-span new law-office, with four shelves of law-books bound in sheep, a green-covered table in the center, three armchairs, and on the wall a steel engraving of "Washington Crossing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... expedition. Moreover, you know that Prince Edward is bound 'prentice to Mr. Howe.(913) All this you have heard; yet, like my cousin the Chronicle, I repeat what has been printed in every newspaper of the week, and then finish with one paragraph of spick and span. Alack! my postscript is not very fortunate: a convoy of twelve thousand men, etc. was going to the King of' Prussia, was attacked unexpectedly by five thousand Austrians, and cut entirely to pieces; provisions, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... Christmas party after breakfast, and was handed round. Mary introduced him. He was spick-and-span, with shining cheeks and a damp and glossy top-knot, and his blue eyes stared at the strange crowd stolidly for several minutes before he suddenly crumpled up his face and uttered a howl ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... believed his old tub was quite seaworthy, and that he should be perfectly willing to undertake a voyage in it, provided it would lead him to me. Oh, he was so silly, and so pompous, and so conceited, and so spick and span! He is the most immaculate creature you ever saw, and was great fun for a while. Then he got to be such a desperate bore that I simply couldn't endure him any longer; and so, here ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... answered, 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 was some ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... comes home from the office, where They think he's just a man The same as they are, with his hair All slick and spick and span. Oh, don't I make it in a mess! It makes us scream for joy. "Sh—sh!" he says, "they mustn't guess ...
— A Jolly Jingle-Book • Various
... 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
... of 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
... kept his room until five o'clock. Then he came down, spick and span, his cane under his arm, upon his hands a pair of bright ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... ragged lot, while the uniforms of the officers looked shabby from the dust and mud of the valley and the trenches around Richmond. Our few brief months in winter quarters had not added much, if any, to our appearance. By some "underground" road, Captain Jno. K. Nance, of the Third, had procured a spick and span new uniform, and when this dashing young officer was clad in his Confederate gray, he stood second to none in the army in the way of "fine looking." New officers did not always "throw off the old and on with the new" as soon as a new uniform ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... 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 ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... direct patronage. "Victoria, the Empress of the Arena," is to-night to perform her unparalleled feats in the ring in the presence of His Excellency. This was the only tribute we saw paid in India to Her Majesty's spick-and-span brand-new title of Empress. We attended the performance, which was really creditable, but the natives sat unmoved throughout every scene; so different from the conduct of the Japanese, who scream with delight like children under similar circumstances. The Indians ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... Shortly after, seven very spick-and-span-looking children presented themselves in the lower hall. Curls had been brushed, hair-ribbons freshly tied, and even Boffin had a new blue ribbon ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... to my host, opened the window, and dropped quietly into a gooseberry bush. Unobserved I crossed the dyke, crawled down the side of a tributary burn, and won the highroad on the far side of the patch of trees. There stood the car, very spick and span in the morning sunlight, but with the dust on her which told of a long journey. I started her, jumped into the chauffeur's seat, and stole gently out on to ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... was in her victoria and away, a very grand-looking lady, indeed, with two in spick and span summer livery on the box, with her exquisite white and gold sunshade, a huge sapphire in the end of the handle, a string of diamonds worth a small fortune round her neck, a gold bag, studded ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... washed, 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 ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... might also get a visit from friend fire-bug," cautioned Grace. "And I don't know whether our cottage is insured or not. But I do know it has lovely furniture and mother says it's a perfect joy to come into a house, all spick and span without having to do the spicking. No, Cleo, please don't ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... you 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 me down the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... thought that he had forgotten her long ago and turned his attentions elsewhere. What girl, unless silly and Victorian, would be afraid of a dude who lived for the sleekness of his hair and the spick-and-spanness of his clothes? Yet now Win was afraid, and she did not think it was because she had suddenly become silly or Victorian. This aquiline-faced young man with the prominent jaw was looking at her as the primitive brute looks at the prey ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... flattened the noses and otherwise 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
... again. All were genuinely surprised this time, for a prim, spick and span, middle-aged ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... 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 upon them it was impossible ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... individual was like the 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
... 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 ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... Bartholomew Mullen. He was very busy polishing the 44. He had good steam on her, and the old tub was wheezing away as if she had the asthma. The 44 was old; she was homely; she was rickety; but Bartholomew Mullen wiped her battered nose as deferentially as if she had been a spick-span, spider-driver, tail-truck mail-racer. She wasn't much—the 44. But in those days Bartholomew wasn't much: ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... 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 an owl, that in a barn Sees a mouse creeping in the corn, Sits still, and shuts his round blue eyes, ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... Burton declared. "I don't care for mouldy old ruins, with ivy and damp places upon the walls. I like something fine and spick and span and handsome, with a tower to it, and a long straight drive that you can see down to the road; plenty of stone work about the windows, and good square rooms. As for the garden, well, let that come. We can plant ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Yonder comes Captain Bull; spick and span, tight and trim; who travels for four or six months every year of his life; who does not commit himself by luxury of raiment or insolence of demeanour, but I think is as great a Snob as any man on board. Bull passes the season in London, sponging for dinners, and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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 ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... are smothered, at 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... engaged the rooms, and speedily arrived to take possession, bringing with him a spick-and-span new fishing-rod and basket. He did not know much about fishing, but he enjoyed himself just as thoroughly as if he did; and he laughed so good-humouredly at his own Cockney blunders, as he called them, that Thomas would ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... yourself, 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 pass in review; for ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... 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 spotless bulk, so wooingly did it invite him to begin. He tried a score of pens before the right one ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... and of course 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 ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was the more remarkable because, at this time it was not something on which the French army could pride itself, being almost entirely ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... 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 ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... as a 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 ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... 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 ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... Bertram 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 a bit ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... there was no doubt that Violet was fond of Granville. Just at first it was as if she couldn't do too much for him, to keep him spick and span, clean from top to toe, and always with a happy polish. Just at first he was, as Ranny said, "such a pretty little chap with his funny purple pillar, and his little peepers winkin' at you kind of playful, half the time." For the sun ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... as spick and span as a new dollar, nattily dressed in a bifurcated riding skirt, from beneath which peeped a pair of high ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... 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
... 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 ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... 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
... 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 ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... he wandered 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 sitting room, falling on the backs ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... one-car special was retracing its way westward up the valley of the Tumbling Water, and Lidgerwood was trying to go to sleep in the well-appointed little state-room which it was Tadasu Matsuwari's pride to keep spick and span and spotlessly clean. But there were disturbing thoughts, many and varied, to keep him awake, chief among them those which hung upon the dramatic midnight episode with the demented woman for its central figure. Through what dreadful Valley ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... general, Nimes is poor; its only treasures are its Roman re- mains, which are of the first order. The new French fashions prevail in many of its streets; the old houses are paltry, and the good houses are new; while beside my hotel rose a big spick-and-span church, which had the oddest air of having been intended for Brooklyn or Cleveland. It is true that this church looked out on a square completely French, - a square of a fine modern disposition, ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... Augurers 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 hath ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... only to spick about my cafe," she said to Miss Spencer, with her agreeable smile. "I should like it served in the garden ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... way 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 the ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... were drawn up in martial array on the after part of the poop, under the command of Captain Targetts and Lieutenants Wagstaff and Shunter of the same serviceable corps; all of the men spick and span in their full regimentals and appearing as smart as if on the parade ground at Forton; although, but a few minutes previously, most of the poor fellows had been washing plates and mess traps, and performing other menial ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night," Bibbs's guide explained, chuckling. "Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... them," Hallett said; "the fellows looked altogether too spick and span, when they marched in. It is just as well that they should get a little experience of the work we have been doing, for months. I saw them, as they marched in, look with astonishment at the state of our men's garments—or rather, I may say, their rags. They would have grown ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... not even a spot or trace of ink anywhere upon his enamelled coat, the tree-stump, the milestone or the three-cornered hat, he had been washed and cleaned for the cabinet with a vengeance, and looked as beautiful and as spick and span as the day the artist had turned him ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... 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, the special pride of ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... 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 ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... 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
... 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
... well-brushed and spick and span. He opened a conversation about the politics of the day. It was with difficulty that Cousin Hans could even give short and commonplace answers; it seemed as though all that had interested him in Captain Schrappe had entirely evaporated. And now Hans remembered that on the way home ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... a plain ol' dame— 'Deed she am! 'Deed she am! Quick with her broom, with her tongue the same— 'Deed she am! 'Deed she am! But she keeps mah house all spick and span; She has good vittles fo' her ol' man; She spanks the chillun, but she loves 'em, too; She sho' am sharp, but she's good and true— 'Deed she ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Mocker • Thornton W. Burgess
... 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 ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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 ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... 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 ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... 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 ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... room slowly. 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
