"Ferule" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... vaulted palm A whispered jest to some one near him, 'Look, He has been among his shadows.' 'Satan take The old women and their shadows! (thus the King Roared) make yourself a man to fight with men. Go: Cyril told us all.' As boys that slink From ferule and the trespass-chiding eye, Away we stole, and transient in a trice From what was left of faded woman-slough To sheathing splendours and the golden scale Of harness, issued in the sun, that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... near, as if for a good long explanatory chat, his left hand spread, and his pipe-stem coming crosswise down upon it like a ferule, "You think amiss of me. Now to undeceive you, I will just enter into ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... day lately before the muzzling order came into force, when a bloodthirsty monster,—a big, white bull-dog, sprang suddenly at me in Cleveland Gardens. Instantly there flashed the thought—what was it that DE QUINCEY recommended? A lucky lunge which drove the ferule of my umbrella down the brute's throat fortunately created a diversion, and allowed a little more time for the study of the problem. Perhaps I will be pardoned this digression, as it affords an opportunity ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... the "stick," made of wood, "ribs," "stretchers" and "springs" of steel; the "runner," "runner notch," the "ferule," "cap," "bands" and "tips" of brass or nickel; then there are the covering, the runner "guard" which is of silk or leather, the "inside cap," the oftentimes fancy handle, which may be of ivory, bone, horn, walrus tusk, or even mother-of-pearl, or some kind ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... snow of his white beard drifting down to his very girdle? What boy would dare to play; or whisper, or even glance aside from his book; while Master Cheever is on the lookout behind his spectacles? For such offenders, if any such there be, a rod of birch is hanging over the fireplace, and a heavy ferule lies on the ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was master of two or three languages, and had that further education which neither books nor years will give, but which some men get from the silent teaching of adversity. She is a great schoolmistress, as many a poor fellow knows, that hath held his hand out to her ferule, and whimpered over his lesson before ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I do what I choose, while you're afraid to move for fear uncle will catch you. What would he do, ferule your little palms?" ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... of the copper, it is somewhat difficult to expose the ends of the junctions nearest the zinc and at the same time avoid short-circuiting. The best procedure is to extend the rock maple spool which passes clear through the ferule in the zinc wall and cut a wide slot in the spool so as to expose the junctions to the air nearest the ferule. By so doing the danger to the unprotected ends of the junctions is much less. The two lead-wires of German silver can be carried through the end of the spool and thus allow the insulation ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict
... one dared to enter the dying woman's room on the ground floor. Even Cimme made way for the others. Colombel was the first to make up his mind, and, swaying from side to side like the mast of a ship, the iron ferule of his cane clattering on ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... is the most astounding confession I have ever listened to. No mere ferule will answer for this offence. Take ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... my little friend, you are just let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other schoolboy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life; take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... only had you down where I come from, Mr. DROOD," cries MONTGOMERY, tickled into ungovernable wrath by the ferule of the umbrella, I'd tar and feather you like a Yankee teacher, and then burn ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... directly derived from its Latin name Foeniculum, which may have been given it from its hay-like smell (foenum), but this is not certain. We have another English word derived from the Giant Fennel of the South of Europe (ferula); this is the ferule, an instrument of punishment for small boys, also adopted from the Latin, the Roman schoolmaster using the stalks of the Fennel for the same purpose as the modern ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... well as ignorant!" he repeated, bringing the ferule of his umbrella smartly down upon the macadam; "and you, Jane Hewitt, and you, ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... gestures. Whippings were not frequent; but when they took place, the correction was performed in a private room adjoining, whence we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and solemnity." He then describes the ferule—"that almost obsolete weapon now." "To make him look more formidable—if a pedagogue had need of these heightenings—Bird wore one of those flowered Indian gowns formerly in use with schoolmasters, the strange figures upon which ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... with difficulty, "dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he smoked ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... greatest of all wonders to be done; he expected his friends and neighbors to believe in him on the strength of the stranger's prediction. Naturally, they preferred to reserve their judgment. He and young Musgrave had learnt their letters under the same ferule, though their paths had diverged since. Some faint reminiscence of companionship survived in young Christie's memory, and in the absence of a generous sympathy at home he went to seek it at Brook. A simple, strong attachment was the result. ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... box-like enclosure, eight or ten feet high, of heavy oak, like the ceiling, with a massy door of the same sombre wood. This, the newcomer soon learned was the "sanctum" of the head-master—the Rev. Dr. Bransby—whose sour visage, snuffy habiliments and upraised ferule seemed so terrible to young Edgar that on the following Sunday when he went to service in the Gothic church, it was with a spirit of deep wonder and perplexity that he regarded from the school gallery the reverend man with countenance ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... country, George. Here, take my stick." And he handed George a long stick with a heavy iron ferule. "If a man is safe here he owes it to himself, not to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of the 12th to the 13th of February, while the novice was on watch, and holding the wheel of the helm, a sad accident took place. The inverted compass, which was fastened by a copper ferule to the woodwork of the cabin, broke off and fell on the floor. It was not ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... movement, and that he perhaps was aiming at the crown, Ivan assailed him in the bitterest terms of reproach. The young prince replied in a manner which so exasperated his father, that he struck him with a staff which he had in his hand. The staff was tipped with an iron ferule which unfortunately hit the young man on the temple, and he fell senseless at his ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... schoolmaster in those days was pretty severe. For slight offences the boys were deprived of their recess or compelled to study for an hour after the school was dismissed. The chief weapon of torture was the ferule, to the efficacy of which I can testify from much personal knowledge. The master had in his desk, however, a cowhide for gross cases. I do not remember knowing how that felt from personal experience, but I remember very well seeing it applied occasionally ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... attained, there ensued great pinchings of ruffles; the fingers that could never hold a ferule nor snap children's ears being incomparable fluting-irons. Next the sash was scornfully untied, and tightened to suggest something resembling a waist. The chastened bows that had been squat, dowdy, spiritless, were given tweaks, flirts, bracing little pokes and ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and obsolete periphrases, all felt in turn the touch of his light lash. The homage paid to Petrarch's stuffed cat at Arqua supplied him with a truly Aristophanic gibe.[203] Society comes next beneath his ferule. There is not a city of Italy which Tassoni did not wring in the withers of its self-conceit. The dialects of Ferrara, Bologna, Bergamo, Florence, Rome, lend the satirist vulgar phrases when he quits the grand style and, taking Virgil's golden trumpet from his lips, slides off into a canaille drawl ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... except that in the dead languages. At the school at Sunbury there was certainly a writing master and a French master. The latter was an extra, and I never had extras. I suppose I must have been in the writing master's class, but though I can call to mind the man, I cannot call to mind his ferule. It was by their ferules that I always knew them, and they me. I feel convinced in my mind that I have been flogged oftener than any human being alive. It was just possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at Winchester, ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... or cut in attempts—usually successful—at boys' recklessness; yet her voice was sweet and her manner toward others, gentle. She hid her face when Miss Stone whipped any one—more fearful far than the rise and fall of Miss Stone's ferule was the soaring and sinking of her broad, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... eyes, and trembled. He durst not look at her, not for what he should see in her face, but for what she should see in his: the anguish of intelligence, the helpless pity. He beat the rock at his feet with the ferule of his stick, and could not lift his head again. When he did, she stood turned from him and drying her eyes on her handkerchief. Their looks met, and she trusted her self-betrayal to him without any attempt at ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Benedict Lambourne, her husband, though," said the mercer, nodding and winking. "Dost thou remember, Mike, what thou saidst when the schoolmaster's ferule was over thee for striking up thy father's crutches?—it is a wise child, saidst thou, that knows its own father. Dr. Bircham laughed till he cried again, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... give one a wipe, give one a lick with the rough side of the tongue. incur blame, excite disapprobation, scandalize, shock, revolt; get a bad name, forfeit one's good opinion, be under a cloud, come under the ferule, bring a hornet's nest about one's ears. take blame, stand corrected; have to answer for. Adj. disapproving &c.v.; scandalized. disparaging, condemnatory, damnatory[obs3], denunciatory, reproachful, abusive, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... what more they can have except the death-bed, and that would be rather out of place in this gay company," said the old gentleman to Mr. Burton, as he mopped his heated face after pounding so heartily he nearly knocked the ferule off his cane. ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... actually dropped. He looked as though he had been struck. Mahommed Gunga slammed his sabre ferule on the stone floor. He too, was hard put to ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... sermons. It is strange how many good men do,—losing point and force and efficiency in a welter of words! If there is one rhetorical lesson which it behooves all theologic or academic professors to lay down and enforce, (if need be with the ferule,) it is this,—Be short. It is amazing the way in which good men lose themselves on Sunday mornings in the lapse of their own language; and most rarely are we confronted from the pulpit with an opinion which would not bear stripping ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... and St Sebastian. The Court of the Abbot of the Bajans, at the College of Annecy, in the same University, throws a little more light on the actual ceremony of purgation. The bajans are summoned into the Abbot's Court, where each of them receives, pro forma, a blow from a ferule. They all stand in the Court, with uncovered heads and by themselves ("Mundus ab immundo venit separandus"); under the penalty of two blows they are required to keep silence ("quia vox funesta in judiciis audiri ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... World, the school that young hearts seek! We know full well that you Will keep him long at tasks that speak Of books and ferule, too! God grant that in the far-off years He finds no dunce's stool, Whereon to weep with foolish tears When Willie ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... of the Hollands speedily dissipated anything like coolness between us and, in the course of an hour's conversation, we became almost as intimate as when we were suffering together under the ferule of old Swishtail. Jack told me that he had quitted the army in disgust; and that his father, who was to leave him a fortune, had died ten thousand pounds in debt: he did not touch upon his own circumstances; but I could read them in his elbows, which were peeping through his ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... cried. "Ferule both my hands, Mr. Brench! Ferule me all you want to! I don't care how hard you strike! But you are a bad, cruel ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... long, conflicts in the outside world disturbed our young teacher. The multiplication table and spelling book no longer enchained her thoughts; larger questions began to fill her mind. About the year 1850 Susan B. Anthony hid her ferule away. Temperance, anti-slavery, woman suffrage,—three pregnant questions,—presented themselves, demanding her consideration. Higher, ever higher, rose their appeals, until she resolved to dedicate her energy and thought to the burning needs of ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... on talking," the botanist begins, and ducks aside just in time to save his eye from the ferule of a stupidly held umbrella. He is going to treat our little tiff about that lady as closed. He has the air of picking up our conversation again ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... is something deliciously pathetic about the insignificance of a great man to his wife—his valet feels small at least on pay-day. "The Schoolmaster Abroad" is a rampant divinity with a ferocious ferule; at home he is a meek person in slippers. The policeman who stands majestically at the cross-roads, waving the white glove of authority, nods in the chimney-corner without a helmet. Bishop Proudie was not much of a hero to Mrs. Proudie, and even a beadle is, I fear, but moderately ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... checked with reprehension, and never to be suspected of sloth. Though he be given to play, it is a sign of spirit and liveliness, so there be a mean had of their sports and relaxations. And from the rod or ferule I would have them free, as from the menace of them; for it ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... over, the horses were made fast again, John, bestrode his nag, the General clambered on to his brazen seat and down they came at a tearing pace directly towards us. Luckily I had read "Charles O'Malley," and knew how to behave in such cases. I jumped from the wagon, and, tying my handkerchief to the ferule of my umbrella, advanced, waving it and shouting, "A flag of truce!" The General ordered a halt and despatched himself to the flag. As he approached I beheld a stout, middle-aged, good natured looking man, dressed in the graceless costume ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... began with a gulp, "a certain modicum of truth in our Beetle's remark. I am—er—inclined to believe that the worthy Randall must have dropped this in ferule—if you know what that means. Beetle, you purport to be an editor. Perhaps you can enlighten the ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... travel of the valve, if levers are employed; but it is better to connect the valve rod to the link of the link motion without the intervention of levers. The pins of the eccentric lever in the old engines used to wear quickly; Stephenson used to put a ferule of brass on these pins, which being loose, and acting like a roller, facilitated the throwing in and out of gear, and when worn could easily be replaced, so that there was no material derangement of the motion of the valve from ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... lived, and how many casks of wine the Sicilians gave to the Phrygians? Yet these were the dispicable minutiae which every schoolmaster was then expected to have at his fingers' ends, and every boy-scholar to learn at the point of the ferule—trash which was only fit to be unlearned ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... what your ancestors are recorded to have been; mine were of the same stock. Both my parents were from Norwalk, Connecticut. I think and feel like you. I, too, was taught the alphabet with blows, and all the knowledge I possessed before I went to West Point was spanked into me by the ferule of those old schoolmasters. [Laughter.] I learned my lesson well, and I hope that you, sons of New England, will ever stand by your country and its flag, glory in the achievements of your ancestors, and forever—and to a day beyond forever, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... a lot of things. And whenever I made a point, I rapped it on the pavement with the ferule of my walking stick; as one would say, ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... all his majesty followed, as he and his wife occupied the central pedestals in the half-circle of immortals. A splendid Jupiter, with hair well set up off the fine brow, ambrosial beard, silver thunderbolts in one hand, and a well-worn ferule in the other. A large stuffed eagle from the museum stood at his feet; and the benign expression of his august countenance showed that he was in a good humour—as well he might be, for he was paid some handsome compliments upon his wise ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... to the methods of education fifty years ago, it was quite customary for the teacher to punish a school-child with his ferule or ruler.] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... birthplace, his parentage, or the color of his hair? To-day, by some single achievement, or by a series of great actions to which his genius accustoms us, he is famous, and antiquarians are busy finding out under what schoolmaster's ferule he was educated, where his grandmother was vaccinated, and so forth. If half a dozen washing-bills of Goldsmith's were to be found to-morrow, would they not inspire a general interest, and be printed in a hundred papers? I lighted upon Oliver, not very long since, in an old Town and Country ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Darlington, and moved towards the door. Mrs. Scragg followed, and so did all the juvenile Scraggs—the latter springing up the stairs with the agility of apes and the noise of a dozen rude schoolboys just freed from the terror of rod and ferule. ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur
... formed the principal umbrage of the Square, and diffused an aroma that you were not yet critical enough to dislike as it deserved; it was here, finally, that your first school, kept by a broad-bosomed, broad-based old lady with a ferule, who was always having tea in a blue cup, with a saucer that didn't match, enlarged the circle both of your observations and your sensations. It was here, at any rate, that my heroine spent many years of her life; which is my excuse for this ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... Bazin bounded up, carrying with him his little low chair, which the children tried to take away, with battles more fierce than those of the Greeks endeavoring to recover the body of Patroclus from the hands of the Trojans. Bazin did more than bound; he let fall both his alphabet and his ferule. "You!" ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... well-drilled urchins, each behind his tire, Waited in ranks the wished command to fire; Then all together, when the signal came, Discharged their a-b abs against the dame, Who, 'mid the volleyed learning, firm and calm, Patted the furloughed ferule on her palm, And, to our wonder, could detect at once, Who flashed the pan, and who was ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... of fibbing, and over and over again did Mac go without his dinner rather than wash his hands. But I whipped and starved them both into obedience, and now I have my reward," concluded the "stern parent" with a proud wave of the fan, which looked very like a ferule, being as big, hard, and uncompromising as ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... spellbound. Stroke after stroke of the hard ferule I heard fall upon the small white hand of the innocent child. You may well hide your eyes from me, Bessie. Oh, why did I not speak? Every stroke went to my heart, but I would not confess my sin, and so I ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... to rule, even the ferule, which must be made of two strips of leather, ten to twelve inches long, sewed together. All offenses, and the number and location of the blows for each, were specified. Later the corporal punishment was ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... to keep a man awake, to keep him alive to his own soul and its fixed design of righteousness, that the better part of moral and religious education is directed; not only that of words and doctors, but the sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all God's scholars till we die. If, as teachers, we are to say anything to the purpose, we must say what will remind the pupil of his soul; we must speak that soul's dialect; we must talk of life and conduct as his soul would have him think of them. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Spanish army. The children had been so long free from all restraint that they did not like to go to school, and their parents did not always take the trouble to insist. There were some reasons for this, as the masters did not know much about what they were trying to teach, and the use of the ferule and scourge (the latter a whip of cords tipped with iron) was frequent and cruel. There were no books but primers, and these were hard to obtain. The writing, paper was furnished by the military authorities and had to be returned when the child was ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... still more formidable consideration, was a black-thorn stick which the colonel had carried since he gave up the sword; it was a beauty, upon which every fellow that came for law, in or out of custody, lavished his admiration—a clean crop, with three inches of an iron ferule on the extremity. My father was, "good easy man," a true Milesian philosopher—his arguments were those impressive ones, called ad hominem, and after he had grassed his man, he explained the reason at ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... very different. Isn't it too bad? I'd like to 'board 'round' the way grandma did, and rap on the window with a ferule, and 'choose sides' and all that! But there's one thing I could do!" exclaimed the little girl, brightening. "I could make the children 'toe the mark'; wouldn't that be fun? I mean stand in a line on a crack in the floor. How grandma would laugh! I'll write her all about it, and send her ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... her they were a very dismal place; she would have been glad to undertake to sweep them and set them in order. It was but half-hospitality to let her remain outside; to punish him for which Isabel administered innumerable taps with the ferule of her straight young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused himself with calling her "Columbia" and accusing her of a patriotism so heated that it scorched. He drew ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... truant from his earliest teens, was once horsed, to undergo a flogging, on the back of James Martineau, and he never afterwards took kindly to the philosophy of that remarkable man. We are glad to know that Edward Valpy's ferule was weak, though his scholarship was strong. Stories were current that even in those days George used to haunt the gipsy tents on that Mousehold Heath which lives eternally in the breezy canvases of "Old Crome," and that he went so far as to stain ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... Between that man Rippenger and me there shall be dealings. He flogged you: let that pass. He exposed you to the contempt of your school-fellows because of a breach in my correspondence with a base-born ferule-swinger. What are we coming to? Richie, my son, I was building a future for you here. And Colonel Goodwin-Colonel Goodwin, you encountered him too, and his marriageable daughter—I owe it to them that I have you here! Well, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for our magician that he had already told his tale in full to the cure, for thus that shrewd personage had hold of the stick at the right end. The corporation held it by the ferule. His reverence looked exceedingly grave and said, "I must question you privately on this untoward business." He took him into a private room and bade the officer stand outside and guard the door, and be ready to come if called. The big ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... close application at his desk in the village school was an unheard-of consequence; and, having repeatedly smarted under the schoolmaster's ferule, not to mention his good mother's switches plucked from the big lilac bush by her door, he decided to run away to the great harbor, and ship upon some vessel ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... cold water. Good by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now! ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rode the horse in plowing corn, raked hay, wielded the shovel and the hoe, and chopped wood. At six years old he began to go to school—the typical district school. "The first date," he once said, "I remember inscribing upon my writing-book was 1818." The ferule, or the birch-rod, was in those days the assistant schoolmaster, and young Barnum made its acquaintance. He was, however, an apt and ready scholar, particularly excelling in mathematics. One night, when he was ten years old, he was called out of bed by his teacher, ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... the colour of the eyes of the most emphatic she—or do but let me have the pleasure to hear thee say, 'I love!'—confess one touch of human frailty—conjugate the verb amo, and I will be a gentle schoolmaster, and you shall have, as father Richards used to say, when we were under his ferule, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... "Either learn, or go: there is yet another choice—to be flogged," was liberally employed. Horace celebrates his old schoolmaster as a "man of many blows," and another distinguished pupil of this teacher, the Busby or Keate of antiquity, has specified the weapons which he employed, the ferule and the thong. The thong is the familiar "tawse" of schools north of the Border. The ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in Southern ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... provoked the cat, Who play'd in turn, but with a gentle pat, His wee friend sparing with a merry laugh, Not punishing his faults by half. In short, he scrupled much the harm, Should he with points his ferule arm. The sparrow, less discreet than he, With dagger beak made very free. Sir Cat, a person wise and staid, Excused the warmth with which he play'd: For 'tis full half of friendship's art To take no joke in serious part. Familiar ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... his very girdle? What boy would dare to play, or whisper, or even glance aside from his book, while Master Cheever is on the look-out, behind his spectacles! For such offenders, if any such there be, a rod of birch is hanging over the fire-place, and a heavy ferule lies on the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... birch; billet; fagot; wand; cane, staff, walking-stick; club, cudgel; goad, gad; gambrel, garrot, ferule, skewer, batlet; stake; boomerang, woomerah; stab, thrust; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... where we could only hear the plaints, but saw nothing. This heightened the decorum and the solemnity. But the ordinary public chastisement was the bastinado, a stroke or two on the palm with that almost obsolete weapon now, the ferule. A ferule was a sort of flat ruler, widened at the inflicting end into a shape resembling a pear,—but nothing like so sweet,—with a delectable hole in the middle to raise blisters, like a cupping-glass. I have an intense recollection of that disused instrument of torture, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... handle either of a small sword or a huge knife, made of an elk's horn. Around the end where the blade had been inserted was a ferule of silver, which, though black, was not much injured by time. Though the handle showed the hole where the blade had been inserted, yet no iron was found, but an oxyde remained ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... live the happier and the longer: for nothing is so conducive to longevity as the union of activity and content. But, like children, we deviate from the road, however well we know it, and run into mire and puddles in despite of frown and ferule. ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... the jewelry. The jeweler, who had wound EDWIN DROOD'S watch for him on the day of the dinner, promptly identified the timepiece by the innumerable scratches around the keyhole; Mr. BUMSTEAD, though at first ecstatic with the idea that the seal-ring was a ferule from an umbrella, at length allowed himself to be persuaded into a gloomy recognition of it as a part of his nephew, and MONTGOMERY was detained in custody ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various
... rhimes relish of the ferule still, Some nose-wise pedant saith; whose deep-seen skill Hath three times construed either Flaccus o'er, And thrice rehears'd them in his trivial flore. So let them tax me for my hot blood's rage, Rather than say I ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... never moved again, being flung so firm upon the beach by one great swamping wave that never another had power to uproot her. Only she careened over beachwards, turning herself away from the seas, as a child bows his head to escape a cruel master's ferule, and then her masts broke off, first the fore and then the main, with a splitting crash that made ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the cage Had household gods the same. The bird's sharp beak full oft provoked the cat, Who play'd in turn, but with a gentle pat, His wee friend sparing with a merry laugh, Not punishing his faults by half. In short, he scrupled much the harm, Should he with points his ferule arm. The Sparrow, less discreet than he, With dagger beak made very free. Sir Cat, a person wise and staid, Excused the warmth with which he play'd: For 'tis full half of friendship's art To take no joke in serious part. ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... an unexpected repugnance to doing this. A fastidious sense of the obligations of class served him for a soul and the thing he was about to do could not be justified even in his loose code of ethics. He examined the ferule of his Malacca ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... Latin, which then seemed to be regarded as the necessary foundation for an education. I must confess that during my stay in Mt. Vernon I was rather a troublesome boy, frequently involved in controversies with the teachers, and sometimes punished in the old-fashioned way with the ferule and the switch, which habit I then regarded as tyrannical and now regard as impolitic. I do not believe that the policy of punishment adopted in the schools of those times would be expedient to-day. It tended to foster a constant irritation ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... goes well, he will assuredly discover certain black pins and human hairs crossed, entwined and affixed in a peculiar fashion to the crown of his hat. The same evil omens will likewise appear at the ferule end of his gold-knobbed walking-stick. Satisfied that there is 'no deception,' the proprietor of the enchanted hat and cane wraps up those articles carefully in several folds of paper, according to instructions, and early ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... consciousness, before Bacon introduced the heresy of induction; when in politics they had a profound faith in statutes and none at all in statistics; when in education they conscientiously rammed down the ologies at the point of the ferule, in blissful ignorance of psychology. If Mr. Mill finds it necessary to rail at Nature because she did not put coal on the top of the ground and build bridges and dig wells for man's convenience, why not call her a jade at once because she does not grow ready-made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... ringing a bell, firing a pea-gun, and such like. Poor Jacko was to be pitied. His want of heart in his labours was very evident. Poor fellow, no time for reflection was allowed him. Like some of the masters in the Old High School,—such cruelty dates back more than thirty years,—a ferule, or a pair of tawse kept Jacko to his work. It was play to the onlookers, but no sport to master Cebus. Had he possessed memory and reflection, how his thoughts must have wandered from Edinburgh to the forests of ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... situation in which he had been placed by Bonaparte. I learned the particulars of this visit through Josephine. Father Berton, whose primitive simplicity of manner was unchanged since the time when he held us under the authority of his ferule, came to invite Bonaparte and Josephine to breakfast with him, which invitation was accepted. Father Berton had at that time living with him one of our old comrades of Brienne, named Bouquet; but he expressly ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... You do not see it. Your minds are occupied with something else, in looking at that organ, or this representation of Solomon's temple, or, perhaps, lingering in melancholy review of your old systems of grammar thro which you plodded at a tedious rate, goaded on by the stimulus of the ferule, or the fear of being called ignorant. From that unhappy reverie I recal your minds, by saying apple. An apple? where? There is none in sight. No; but you have distinct recollections of a single object I just now held before you. You see it, ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... les moyens, les petits, and les minimes —and each class had its own class-room and courtyard. Balzac was considered the idlest and most pathetic boy in his division, and was continually punished. Reproaches, the ferule, the dark cell, were his portion, and with his quick and delicate senses he suffered intensely from the want of air in the class-rooms. There, according to the graphic picture in "Louis Lambert," everything was dirty, and eighty boys inhabited a hall, in the centre of which were two ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... which of these offenses is the greatest, if all have received the same punishment? Why should giving him a good thrashing teach him to be kind to his little sister? Why should he learn the multiplication table with greater rapidity because you ferule him soundly? Have you ever found pain an assistance ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... I was a widow," Hilda began, gazing at the ferule of her umbrella, which gleamed on ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... of the ordinary Edison lamp and socket. One end of the filament is connected to the metal screw ferule at the base. The other end is attached to the metal button in the centre of the extreme bottom of the base. Screwing the lamp into the socket automatically connects the filament on one end to the screw, on the other to an insulated plate at ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... said he softly; "bone han'le 'n ferule. I r'member threshing 'm with it. I can r'memb'r carry'ng—" Here Mr. BUMSTEAD burst into tears, and made a frenzied dash at the lock of hair which he ...
— Punchinello Vol. II., No. 30, October 22, 1870 • Various
... as difficult as Mr. Dick's efforts to tell his story without mentioning the unfortunate Charles I. William Mackenzie is the Cecil Rhodes of Canada—gentle, kindly, almost retiring in his manner, and with a glance as inscrutable as the sea. Beginning as a school-teacher, he early threw aside the ferule and the chalk, to get into the world of action. In his time he has built shacks, kept a country store, and run a saw-mill. Three things come to him as priceless treasure out of the self-discipline of these experiences: a rare aptitude to see and ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... people became greater and greater until it seemed impossible to admit another person without filling the center of the ballroom and the royal space. As there was no music, the chatter of voices made an insistent humming din. At last! the Prefetto di Palazzo sounded three loud strokes, with the ferule of his mace, upon the floor, the sound of voices ceased, the doors into the royal apartments were thrown open, the band struck up the royal march, and their Majesties entered, followed by the members of their suite. Every one made a deep reverence, and the Queen seated herself upon the gold ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... opponents, the Liberals, dominated by men of radical tendencies, were eager to assert the right, to which they thought Cuba entitled as an independent sovereign nation, to make possible mistakes and correct them without having the United States forever holding the ferule of the schoolmaster over it. They were well aware, however, that they were not at liberty to have their country pass through the tempestuous experience which had been the lot of so many Hispanic republics. They could ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... with a discipline of iron. "The leathern ferule played its terrible role with honour" among Minions, Smalls, Mediums, and Greats. There were, however, certain mitigations —long walks in the woods, cards, and amateur theatricals during vacation; gardening and pigeon-fancying; stilt-walking, sliding and clog-dancing; and, withal, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... plan which he would afterwards impart to them in confidence at the proper time, he could almost take it upon himself to say, that in a short time, no tyrannical usher, or cast-off tutor of the Squire, should venture to show his face, with or without tawse or ferule, within the boundaries ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... economy is the rule, one footstool—they are mere little wooden benches—serves both for the fireside and the kirk. To facilitate transportation, these benches are provided with little holes perforating the centre of the seat, large enough to admit the ferule of an umbrella or cane; and thus, borne aloft on these articles, the little benches are carried proudly above the shoulders of the bearers, like triumphant banners. In order to avoid the noise arising from the clatter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... invited again, refrained from offering to take her to the theater. He waited several weeks, and then ventured, with some hesitation, to ask her to go with him to see one of the Wagner operas. He was frightened at his own boldness in asking, and he kept his eyes upon the ferule of his cane with which he was tapping the toe of his boot, afraid to look up while she answered. She saw how timidly he asked, and her heart was cruelly wounded by the necessity she felt to refuse; but she had fortified herself to ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... that he was about to receive a tremendous thrashing; but he determined that he would not flinch. He held out his right hand, and received the blow from a heavy ferule. His hand felt as if he had been struck by a ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... believed, as did Puritan parents, that sparing the rod spoiled the child, and great latitude was given in punishment; the rod and ferule were fiercely and frequently plied "with lamming and with whipping, and such benefits of nature" as in English schools of the same date. When young men were publicly whipped in colleges, children were sure to be well trained in smaller schools. Every ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... was worse still, when a gentleman smiled at her from a box. Then Lily would stare at her Ma with the terrified eye of a parrot contemplating Para's whip. She even exaggerated, pinched her lips, like a school-girl applying herself to her book for fear of the ferule. Ma did not ask so much as that. Sometimes, when Lily, after a successful trick, threw out her chest to draw breath more easily and rode round the stage with a pretty smile on her lips, Ma saw no harm in it, even rejoiced within herself at her daughter's beauty. Ma knew how to be just and not ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... unfolded to their view. Subjects and scenes long forgotten or seldom remembered presented themselves. There was the little Fifeshire school, with its umbrageous playground, where he had been a merry laughing lad, and where Dominie Angus had given him his first taste of ferule and Fotherup. There was the patched portrait of Cardinal Beaton, in St. Mary's College, at which he and his friend John Dean had been wont to gaze with rapt admiration in the old days left so far behind. There was that odd adventure among the Mendip ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... face of Mr. Ball, the master, appeared at the door; he rapped sharply with his ferule, and called: "Books, books, books!" The bats were dropped, and the boys and girls began streaming into the school, but some of the boys managed to ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston
... which he had laid down with his overcoat. It was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule, and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes, exactly like a child's fishing-rod, which I afterward found to have been their former state. A double hook of steel was now ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... spy's walking stick, ferule end upward. It was a rather long, slender-looking ferrule of steel. But what interested young Benson most was that he had found ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... sober-shabby black. His frock-coat was buttoned tight round the waist, and left to bulge open majestically at the chest. His hands were covered with black cotton gloves neatly darned at the fingers; his umbrella, worn down at the ferule to the last quarter of an inch, was carefully preserved, nevertheless, in an oilskin case. The front view of him was the view in which he looked oldest; meeting him face to face, he might have been estimated at fifty or ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... proud, Tartarin of Tarascon marched on in the night, ringing his heels with regularity, and sending sparks out of the paving-stones with the ferule of his stick. Whether in avenues, streets, or lanes, he took care to keep in the middle of the road—an excellent method of precaution, allowing one to see danger coming, and, above all, to avoid any droppings from windows, as happens after dark in Tarascon and the Old ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... me to school, but I looked at the master, and saw that he was a smooth round ferule, or an improper noun, or a vulgar fraction, and refused to obey him. Or he was a piece of string, a rag, a willow-wand, and I had a contemptuous pity. But one was a well of cool, deep water, and looking suddenly in, one day, I ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... divine. This was not the opinion of Silviane, who from the first lines regarded Pauline as the ideal heroine of some symbolical legend. However, as the critic talked on and on, she had to feign approval; and he was delighted at finding her so beautiful and docile beneath his ferule. At last, as ten o'clock was striking, he rose and tore out of the hot and reeking room in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... he said one day, "I was whipped at school for a slight offense—whipped with a ferule right across my hands, so that I went home with a blue mark where the blood had settled, and for a fortnight my hands were stiff and swollen from the blows. The other day an old man called at my ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... school-teacher simply glanced at her and said nothing. The school-teacher was an elderly woman who had taught school ever since she was sixteen. She was called very strict, and the little girls were all afraid of her. She could ferule a boy just as well as a man could. Her name was Miss Tabitha Hanks. She did not like Rosy Stebbins very well, although she tried to be impartial. Once at recess she pushed Charlotte Hutchins and Sarah Allen, who were twisting Rosy's curls, ...
— Comfort Pease and her Gold Ring • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... horse could out-trot all others. When the surveying was done, Roger accepted the invitation of the committeemen to keep the winter school. Never before had there been a master who could keep the big boys in order without using the ferule, but somehow the great strapping fellows, who might have put the master on his back in a twinkling, could not find it in their hearts to do anything that would trouble him. Other masters were content if they went through the regular daily stint of reading, writing, spelling, and ciphering, but ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... Universal Spirit met with sweet acquiescence? His role in the world was humble, as befitted the greatest man of humility I ever knew. In this Amherst Street house, Master Mahasaya {FN9-1} conducted a small high school for boys. No words of chastisement passed his lips; no rule and ferule maintained his discipline. Higher mathematics indeed were taught in these modest classrooms, and a chemistry of love absent from the textbooks. He spread his wisdom by spiritual contagion rather than impermeable precept. Consumed by an unsophisticated passion for the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... pair of big gray stockings, which turned up and flopped at the toes. And it wasn't that ridiculous goosequill in her hair which made her cry either, though I am sure it must have hurt. No; it was the thought of the master, that dreadful man with the ferule and the birch sticks. ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... whip, or not to whip?—that is the question. Whether 'tis easier in the mind to suffer The deaf'ning clamor of some fifty urchins, Or take birch and ferule 'gainst the rebels, And by opposing end it? To whip—to flog— Each day, and by a whip to say we end The whispering, shuffling, and ceaseless buzzing Which a school is heir to—'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To whip, to flog, To whip, ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks
... in the palm of the hand will cause the ferule to break when the teacher strikes the palm ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... Jim with the ferule at his throat. "Everywhere!" and aimed a second more successful blow ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster is written in every line of his face and stamped ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... be supposed that Master Horner was of a cruel and ogrish nature—a babe-eater—a Herod—one who delighted in torturing the helpless. Such souls there may be, among those endowed with the awful control of the ferule, but they are rare in the fresh and natural regions we describe. It is, we believe, where young gentlemen are to be crammed for college, that the process of hardening heart and skin together goes on most vigorously. Yet among the uneducated there ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... learn one's trade. But it won't do to learn it under the ferule of professors who want to cram their own views forcibly into your nut. That Mazel is ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... surrounded herself with prim, elderly matrons of her own stamp, who lent each other mutual support, and people stood in awe of her. As for poor Pons, his relations with this fiend in petticoats were very much those of a schoolboy with the master whose one idea of communication is the ferule. ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... sun do your fine Latin words mean, you pompous old pedant?" asked Zerbine. "You have neglected to translate them, entirely forgetting that not everybody has been professor in a college, and knight of the ferule, like yourself." ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... "Where's your ferule, Brother Levis?" asked Rosie, facetiously, after a close scrutiny of the table, not omitting ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... best quality, but generally unrolled. Young Jukes, the chief mate, attending his commander to the gangway, would sometimes venture to say, with the greatest gentleness, "Allow me, sir"—and possessing himself of the umbrella deferentially, would elevate the ferule, shake the folds, twirl a neat furl in a jiffy, and hand it back; going through the performance with a face of such portentous gravity, that Mr. Solomon Rout, the chief engineer, smoking his morning cigar over the skylight, ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... could not be transmuted into intellectual ability. The same daring, confidence, enterprise, and passion for action, which in after life made him an explorer, were first expressed in that love of mischief which vexes the hearts of parents and calls into exercise the pedagogue's ferule. All arbitrary authority found him a resolute little rebel. Dr. Elder furnishes some amusing instances of his audacity and determination. Though smaller than other boys of his age, he possessed "the clear advantage of that energy of nerve and that sort of twill in the muscular texture ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... rests with those who rule with simplicity. They soften by the spirit the harshness of the fact. Their authority is not in shoulder-straps, titles or disciplinary measures. They make use of neither ferule nor threats, yet they achieve everything. Why? Because we feel that they are themselves ready for everything. That which confers upon a man the right to demand of another the sacrifice of his time, his money, his passions, even his life, is not only that he is ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... a sharp harsh voice, and General Crucie, with the great scar upon his white forehead looking red and inflamed as it always did when he was angry, strode up, thumped down his thick malacca cane, so that the ferule went into the grass and it stood alone, while he looked from one to the ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs, the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind brought the whistle ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... hold out your hands now, and I shall ferule thee—the whole school," was the stern remark of the young teacher, as she took off her spectacles ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May |
