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Ferule   Listen
verb
Ferule  v. t.  (past & past part. feruled; pres. part. feruling)  To punish with a ferule.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ferule" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 of wordy shifts, and be ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... "but had enlisted in the army, served abroad during the wars of Queen Anne's time, and risen to the rank of quartermaster of a regiment in Spain. At the return of peace, having no longer exercise for the sword, he resumed the ferule, and drilled the urchin populace ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin

... 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 hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... Ma 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 ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... 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

... This was the cane he carried, instead of going armed. But he was forever leaving it anywhere about, so that, nine times out of ten, he went forth without it on his errant "browsing" around; and it was a wonder that this time he knew where to find it.] and, placing the ferule end to the wall, to act as a level, he bade the young man draw near and stand under. When the rod was carefully adjusted to the top of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... 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 gradation of ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... "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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... be nourished with ambition, pricked forward with honour, 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

... 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 ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... 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 ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... sniffing up the strange odour of the ailantus-trees which at that time 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 ...
— Washington Square • Henry James

... "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 man, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens

... Oh, 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 draft 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 ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... 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

... 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

... with, pluck a crow with; 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^, denunciatory, reproachful, abusive, objurgatory^, clamorous, vituperative; defamatory ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... tried schoolteaching, but he had to give up his position because he would not exercise the birch and ferule. "If the scholars once find out the teacher is not goin' to sting 'em up when they need it, that is an end to the skule," said one of the directors, and he spat violently at a fly, ten feet away. The others agreeing with him, Thoreau ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... 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

... and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This 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 ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... on 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 ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... now my 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 ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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. Familiar since they saw the light, Mere habit kept ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... see 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

... of the 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 ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... 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 it to ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... 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

... occasions. If all 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 one Sunday morning deposits the parcel in a certain hole in ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... Monsieur Douloir ceased to smile—he showed no more affectionate interest; he appeared, on the contrary, to consider me as a very troublesome little fellow. I discovered, later on, that he entertained the same feelings towards all his pupils. He distributed whacks of his ferule with an agility no one could have expected on the part of so corpulent a person. But his first aspect of tender interest invariably reappeared when he spoke to any of our mothers in our presence; and always at such times, while warmly praising ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France

... 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... the Tre Cento, Petrarchisti spinning cobwebs of old metaphors 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 ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... they took his advice, and followed the 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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, 'you ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post

... "Emile" he outlines our so-called pedagogic new-thought methods. Birds' nests, bumblebees, hornets' nests, leaves, buds, flowers, grasses, mosses, are schoolroom properties to which he often refers. To a great degree he replaced the ferule, cat-o'-nine-tails, dunce-cap, musty, dusty books, tear-stained slates, awful examples and punishments of a hundred lines of Vergil, by wholesome good-cheer and limpid forgetfulness of self in drawing pictures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... unconscious of their external dress; but against spiritual pride the soul is defenceless, and of all its forms the subtlest and the meanest is pride of intellect. If "nostra domina paupertas" had a mortal enemy, it was not the pride beneath a scarlet robe, but that in a schoolmaster's ferule, and of all schoolmasters the vainest and most pretentious was the scholastic philosopher. Satan was logic. Lord Bacon held much the same opinion. "I reject the syllogism," was the starting-point of his teaching as it was the essence of Saint Francis's, and the reasons of both men were the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... 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 vent a ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... 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

... life in a man-of-war. Far from it. He lords it over those below him, while lorded over himself by his superiors. It is as if with one hand a school-boy snapped his fingers at a dog, and at the same time received upon the other the discipline of the usher's ferule. And though, by the American Articles of War, a Navy Captain cannot, of his own authority, legally punish a midshipman, otherwise than by suspension from duty (the same as with respect to the Ward-room officers), yet this is one of those sea-statutes which the Captain, to a ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... from his house, he would 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

... hardened 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 ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... 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! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 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 of these benches as they are lowered ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... 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 to wipe ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May

... children than the angriest looks and 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 we used to interpret into hieroglyphics of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... 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 ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn

... 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 order to do ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... a hot plate, and sold them dotted with butter and sprinkled with sugar to the lucky possessors of a sou. Even the sharp urchin who presided over the old red umbrella, which, reversed, with the ferule fixed in a cross-bar of wood, served as a receptacle for sheets of festive note-paper embellished with lace edges and further adorned with coloured scraps, temporarily entrusting a juvenile sister with his responsibilities, added his presence ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd

... what pleasantness of teaching there is in books, how easy, how secret! How safely we lay bare the poverty of human ignorance to books without feeling any shame! They are masters who instruct us without rod or ferule, without angry words, without clothes or money. If you come to them they are not asleep; if you ask and inquire of them they do not withdraw themselves; they do not chide if you make mistakes; they do not laugh at you ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury

... a 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

... go 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 ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... 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 dabs, till, acknowledging ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... 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 that the ferrule ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... 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

... witch!" cried the General, his face showing affection and annoyance. "That's the most hoyden jade I'm sure you ever gave the ferule to." ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro

... 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 ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells

... of moral ascendancy 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 ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... 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 ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... 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 her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... his feat, he was nobody. Who cared about his 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 ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 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 ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... ignorant!" he repeated, bringing the ferule of his umbrella smartly down upon the macadam; "and you, Jane ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... not otherwise armed) were kept in the church of each parish. There, against the wall, they always stood—a whole sheaf of them, formed of new ash stems, with a spike driven in at one end, the stick being preserved from splitting by a ferule. And there they remained, year after year, in the corner of the aisle, till they were removed and placed under the gallery stairs, and thence ultimately to the belfry, where they grew black, rusty, and worm-eaten, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy

... I was a widow," Hilda began, gazing at the ferule of her umbrella, which gleamed on ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... the ground of cruelty! There 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, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... school-house of my A, B, C, Where 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

... limes a contraband article, and solemnly vowed to publicly ferule the first person who was found breaking the law. This much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing gum after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post-office, had forbidden distortions ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... 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 rule, the peaceful state of his kingdom, and the ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... as if 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 stole ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various

... 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 ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... from a like cause, is in the same irritable condition of both body and mind with themselves. He, too, must needs give vent to his irascible feelings some how. And what way is more natural, under such circumstances, than to resort to the use of the ferule, the rod, and the strap! We have already referred to a case, in which formerly fever constantly prevailed, but where disease disappeared altogether upon the introduction of pure air. Let the same ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... not altogether pleasant ones. He was jeered at by the other boys on account of his foreign tongue. The discipline too of the school was very strict. The ferule and the birch were constantly employed. If he was perchance late at school, either in the morning or afternoon, he had additional tasks and impositions, not that he often suffered on that account. He attended with great assiduity to his studies, anxious to improve himself, and to show that he was ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... 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 ...
— The Hoosier School-boy • Edward Eggleston

... it had been made for use, not for play; and there was no play in Mrs. Randolph's use of it. This was not like her father's ferule, which Daisy could bear in silence, if tears would come; her mother's handling forced cries from her; though smothered and kept under in a way that showed ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell

... 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 of Uncle Sam's army; but I must say that he wore it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... great mystery of the grave is 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. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... the air so as to take up most rapidly the temperature 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 ...
— Respiration Calorimeters for Studying the Respiratory Exchange and Energy Transformations of Man • Francis Gano Benedict

... 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 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 ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... 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 ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... 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 you like a ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... 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 forbade him to show himself to Bonaparte or any one of his suite, because Bouquet, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... 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 ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May

... 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 ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... 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

... life was semi-monastic, 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; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... Anchemolus, the number of years Acestes 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 the moment it ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar

... 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 ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... 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!" said ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... 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 resist ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... the man was arrayed throughout in 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 more. Walking ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... 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 ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church

... cut 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 ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... 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 ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various

... grandfather Beltham; the same, in a minor degree, to Captain Jasper Welsh. 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

... you: you set him down in your own mind as a kind of Crichton. Another weazen-faced, pinched-up fellow in a scant cloak, you think must have been sometime a schoolmaster: he is so very precise, and wears such an indescribable look of the ferule. There is one big student, with a huge beard and a rollicking good-natured eye, whom you would quite like to see measure strength with your old usher, and on careful comparison rather think the ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell

... steal apples and rifle birds' nests, and on "the straggling fence that skirts the way," he drew pictures of Paddy Byrne, the schoolmaster, who amazed the rustics by the amount of knowledge he carried in one small head. But Paddy Byrne did not love art for art's sake, so he applied the ferule vigorously to little Goldsmith's anatomy, with a hope of diverting the lad's inclinations from art to arithmetic. I do not think the plan was very successful, for the pockmarked youngster was often ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... up his hat, and took his cane from the tall china umbrella-stand by the hall table. As he stepped through the front doorway he caught sight of the end of his cane, which he was carrying tucked under his arm. Fastened to the ferule of the cane was the round top of ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... 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 ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Institute," though at the moment of Sixth Avenue this latter), whose benches indeed my brother didn't haunt, but who handled us literally with gloves—I still see the elegant objects as Miss Rogers beat time with a long black ferule to some species of droning chant or chorus in which we spent most of our hours; just as I see her very tall and straight and spare, in a light blue dress, her firm face framed in long black glossy ringlets and the stamp of the Chelsea Female Institute all over her. Mrs. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... steps. To whom belonged these tell-tale signs of occupation? Glancing farther up she saw the end of a stick protruding from the loose piles of straw that trickled over the top of the ladder, and she recognized the stick, a stout one with a peculiar ferule that also belonged to Crabbe. He must be in the loft, either sleeping or keeping silence, and now she found herself in the most uncomfortable position a woman can possibly occupy; to her already crowded list of lovers had been added another, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... 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 ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... rebel, you had best heed how you talk against General Lord Howe," here said a thin, wasp-waisted, epauletted officer of the castle, coming near and flourishing his sword like a schoolmaster's ferule. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... under the 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

... direction of the bell-rope; and, as these produced no effect, uncouth visages were made, like those of monkeys when enraged; teeth were gnashed, tongues thrust out, and even fists were bent at me. The master, who stood at the end of the room, with a huge ferule under his arm, bent full upon me a look of stern appeal; and the ushers, of whom there were four, glared upon me, each from his own particular corner, as I vainly turned, in one direction and another, in search ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... the night 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 seen till the ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... performed in a private room adjoining, 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 23, September 3, 1870 • Various

... 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. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... ago," 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 house ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... morning, prayers and breakfast being despatched,—during which Parson Brummem had determined to leave Reuben to the sting of his conscience,—the master appears in the school-room with his wristbands turned up, and his ferule in hand, to enforce judgment upon the culprit. It had been a frosty night, and the cool October air had not tempted the boys to any wide movement out of doors, so that no occupant of the parsonage had as yet detected the draggled white banner that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... 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 Divine Mother, ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... 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 the ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant



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