"Martinet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... proceedings narrowly, and, when he saw us descend into the boat, he very coolly slipped down the ship's side, and took his place in the stern-sheets, with as much quiet dignity as if he had been captain. Marble was a good deal of a ship's martinet in such matters, and he did not more than half like the familiarity and impudence of ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... firelock was replaced by the flint musket, and the rapidity and certainty of fire vastly increased. The undisciplined independence of the officers commanding regiments and companies was suppressed by the rigorous and methodical Colonel Martinet, whose name has remained in other armies besides that of France as a synonyme ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... then, rather a different man from the stern little martinet who had stood in the throat of the arcade. ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... rang on the stone steps, and, since Tess was standing close to the veranda rail, he turned to face her at the top. Saluting with martinet precision before removing his helmet, he did not get a clear view of the Rajputni. "As I've said many times, ma'am, the one house in the world where Tom Tripe may sit down with princes ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... the Prince, "you are no such martinet in duty." And then seeing that the man was shaking from head to foot, Otto laid a hand upon his shoulder. "If I meant you harm," he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... These disagreeable realities of life grow upon one; do they not? You took off my shoes and dried them for me at a woodman's cottage. I am obliged to put up with my maid's doing those things now. And Miss Blink the mild is changed for Lady Baldock the martinet. And if I rode about with you in a wood all day I should be sent to Coventry instead of to bed. And so you see everything is changed as well ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... editor of a great New York daily was known in the newspaper world as a martinet and severe disciplinarian. Some of his caustic and biting criticisms are classics. Once, however, the tables were turned upon him in a way that left him speechless ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... boots polished and their buttons furbished, marching in solid platoon formation, turning and wheeling with the mathematical regularity of a machine. His men were drilled and disciplined until they were automatons, for Braddock was a martinet. Their ranks ran true, their equipment was in the pink of soldierly condition; the sunlight glittered from their bayonets, you could see your face in their leather accouterments, and Braddock proudly marched them into the American woods as ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... the boys who attended Salsette Academy mention that martinet, Major Pater. Although his infirmity—or injury—precluded his having anything to do with the drilling of the pupils of the academy, in the schoolroom he was the most stern of ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... by the number of soldiers in the streets, and with the neatness, and indeed almost stiffness, of their uniform and bearing. Each man walked as if on parade, and the eye of the strictest martinet could not have detected a speck of dust on their equipment, or an ill-adjusted ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... any traditional pattern. A little more air and light should be let in upon life. I should think the world had stood long enough under the drill of Adjutant Fashion. It is hard work; the posture is wearisome, and Fashion is an awful martinet and has a quick eye, and comes down mercilessly on the unfortunate wight who cannot square his toes to the approved pattern, or who appears upon parade with a darn in his coat or with a shoulder belt insufficiently pipe-clayed. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... given my name, but not my business, I was ushered up, perhaps after an interval of ten minutes, to a sitting-room on the first floor, and there I found myself face to face with a fat, red-faced man in evening dress; and if ever there was a martinet down Montey way, this fine gentleman was that same. He was fat, I say, and forty—but to write that he was fair would be impossible, for he hadn't more than about half a dozen hairs on his head, and those had drifted down his neck to get out of the wind. When I came in he appeared ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... time of his birth, and continued in Russia to the end of his father's reign. In the period of thirty years during which he was heir-apparent, the moral atmosphere of St Petersburg was very unfavourable to the development of any originality of thought or character. It was a time of government on martinet principles, under which all freedom of thought and all private initiative were as far as possible suppressed vigorously by the administration. Political topics were studiously avoided in general conversation, and books or newspapers in which the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Uncle Jack testily. "We'll settle His Lordship's little martinet of the plains. Warrant for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... that ravenous intellect. Grammars, manuals, compends,—all the apparatus of the classes,— were only oil to its flame. The Master of the Nicolai-Schule in Leipzig, his first instructor, was a steady practitioner of the Martinet order. The pupils were ranged in classes corresponding to their civil ages,—their studies graduated according to the baptismal register. It was not a question of faculty or proficiency, how a lad should be classed and what he should read, but of calendar years. As if a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... carrying with it a certain promptness and decision; above all, it was a very remarkable word for Lucy to use. "The girl is a martinet in these things," thought he; "she can't forgive the least bit of impoliteness. I suppose he snubbed Jack Tar. What a crime! But I had better let this blow over before I go any farther." So he postponed his disclosure ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... to see a church door-way, he need not sleep at the parsonage. On the following day, I will get over to Nuncombe Putney, and I hope that you will see me. Considering my long friendship with you, and my great attachment to your father and mother, I do not think that the strictest martinet would tell you that you need hesitate in ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... answered the officer, who was of the Martinet school, as stern and unbending as one of his men's muskets; "he has been found guilty, and I have no power to reprieve him. We must put a stop to this system of sending spies into our camp. The ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... be overheard. Don't be afraid. I come to befriend you. Mars' Emile, don't you know me?" said the little old man, as he pushed back the slouched hat from his face, and peered into Emile's eyes. "Don't you know old Peter Martinet?" ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... disorderly and much-neglected Irish farm assume an air of discipline, regularity, and neatness at a moment's notice, was pretty much such an exploit as it would have been to muster an Indian tribe, and pass them before some Prussian martinet as a regiment ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... the master restored order instantly, and this retired soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but capable man of action, had the matter in hand from the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and, almost before I could realise it, there were streaming buckets on the scene and a line of men and women formed between the building ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Maitland's escritoire, unhappily, toward the close of their conference, or, possibly, the mighty processes of departmental law, with its attendant annoyances of charges preferred, hearings before an obviously prejudiced yet high-principled martinet, reprimands and rulings, reductions in rank, "breaking," transfers; or—yet a third possibility—with the prevailing rate of wage as contrasted between detective and "sidewalk-pounder," and the cost of living as contrasted ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... me laugh with a story, that he said the English officers had told him of General Knyphausen, who commanded the Hessian mercenaries, in 1776. This officer, a rigid martinet, knew nothing of the sea, and not much more of geography. On the voyage between England and America, he was in the ship of Lord Howe, where he passed several uncomfortable weeks, the fleet having an unusually long passage, on account of the bad sailing of some of the transports. At length Knyphausen ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Such a sea-martinet was our Captain, that sometimes we were roused from our hammocks at night; when a scene would ensue that it is not in the power of pen and ink to describe. Five hundred men spring to their feet, dress themselves, ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Were he likely to be content with the mere fact of the child's death, apart from the process and leisurely expansion of its mental agony—in that case there would be no hope. But, because our present murderer is fastidiously finical in his exactions—a sort of martinet in the scenical grouping and draping of the circumstances in his murders—therefore it is that hope becomes reasonable, since all such refinements of preparation demand time. Murders of mere necessity Williams was obliged to hurry; but, in a murder ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the most irksome duty we had to fulfil inasmuch as we were then treated to insults of every description. The Commandant was a martinet of the worst type. We were supposed to trim ourselves up and to look as spick and span as we could under the circumstances. This was more particularly demanded when a notable visitor—visitors were few and far between—came to the camp to perform ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... that a strong and generous feeling existed in the breasts of hundreds in the British navy, concerning the nature of the wrong that was done a foreign people, by the practice of impressing men from under their flag. Although Cuffe was too much of a martinet to carry his notions on the subject to a very refined point, he was too much of a man not to be reluctant to punish another for doing what he felt he would have done himself, under similar circumstances, and what he could not but know ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Barker was a small, thin, sandy man, with a large upper lip that met the lower in a straight line, a lean nose, and eyes perpetually bloodshot. His manner was that of a bully of the most brutal kind. He browbeat his officers, cuffed and kicked his men, in his best days a martinet, in his worst a madman. The only good point about him was that he never used the cat, which, as Bulger ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... you like, you martinet! I will put up with anything patiently, if only I know that you still love me, and that you will be mine, all mine, as soon as this terrible war no longer stands between ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... long pencil, Sissy, a martinet for technic, assumed all the airs of her own professor and prepared ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... sables as big and soft as a pillow—she could easily have buried her arms in it to the shoulder. The elaborateness of Nina's clothes filled the contessa with satisfaction, for she thought them barbarously inappropriate, and she knew that Giovanni was a martinet so ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... of a clerical dignitary in a cathedral town, where she had led the fashion until she was as near forty-five as a single lady can be. A stiff commissariat officer of sixty, famous as a martinet, had then become enamoured of the gravity with which she drove the proprieties four-in-hand through the cathedral town society, and had solicited to be taken beside her on the box of the cool coach of ceremony to which that team was harnessed. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Academy as an officer. We had a prescribed uniform, certainly; but regulations, like legislative acts, admit of much variety of interpretation and latitude in practice, unless there is behind them a strong public sentiment. In my earlier days there was no public sentiment of the somewhat martinet kind; such as would compel all alike to wear an overcoat because the captain felt cold. In practice, there was great laxity in details. I remember, in later days and later manners, when we were all compelled to be well ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... have been o'er-worried By ultra-Martinet; Into unwisdom hurried, Be sure Bull won't forget. But England's Redcoats must not ape The Hyde Park howl, that's clear; So no more row, row, row, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... instance, outside Orchard Glen, knew that young Mrs. Martin had been a perfect martinet in her teaching days, but had now lost all her old power with the rod, and her children were the terror of the village? And who but a neighbour could have known that Granny Minns scolded Mitty all day long and pretended ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... discharge of the assistant surgeon, the surgeon in charge of the hospital, who was a martinet in discipline, and somewhat irritated for some cause, resolved, in order to annoy her, to compel the discharge of the negro nurses and attendants, and require her to employ convalescent soldiers, as the other hospitals ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... political power, that it would have been able to command elections, to compel ministers, to encourage the weak hearts of willing but fearful clergymen by fair hopes of deaneries and bishoprics. Its members were no clique of unpractical fanatics—no men less. Though it might number among them a few martinet ex-post-captains, and noblemen of questionable sanity, capable of no more practical study than that of unfulfilled prophecy, the vast majority of them were landowners, merchants, bankers, commercial men of all ranks, full of worldly experience, and of the science of organisation, skilled ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... possess all the pliability of movement fitted to execute military manoeuvres. Their motions appeared spontaneous and confused, but the result was order and regularity; so that a general must have praised the conclusion, though a martinet might have ridiculed the method ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... theory of Lincoln's powers of judgment does not apply. Though probably unfair on the one point of McClellan's attitude to Pope, he knew his man otherwise. Lincoln had also discovered that Halleck, the veriest martinet of a general, was of little value at a crisis. During the next two months, McClellan, under the direct oversight of the President, was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... Salisbury. This is not a court-martial, but an informal investigation, and I shall be glad to have you and Dr. Connelly entirely free to ask any questions you please," replied the captain, who was anything but a martinet. ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... engage in the contest of snow-balling, Adjutant Pope always took a leading part. It was this spirit of sport and his mingling with the common soldier, while off duty, that endeared Pope so much to the troop. With his sword and sash he could act the martinet, but when those were laid aside Adjutant Pope was one of the "boys," and engaged a "boat" with them as much as any one in the "Cross Anchors," a company noted for its love ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... striking fire than flint and steel. Moreover, Voltaire was normally satirical, restless, inclined to vanity and jealousy, and that terrible pen of his could never be brought to respect persons and places. With a martinet like Frederick, the visit was sure to end in a quarrel, despite the admiration of the prince for ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Canada, and in alleviating their difficulties by all the means in the power of his government. In these and other matters of Canadian interest he proved conclusively that he was not the mere military martinet that some Canadian writers with inadequate information would make him. When he left Canada he was succeeded by Sir Guy Carleton, then elevated to the peerage as Lord Dorchester, who was called upon to take part in great changes in the constitution of Canada which must be left for ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... French merchant ships very much. On the other hand, imagining that they had done essential service to the Spaniards, the French expected to have received at least civil treatment in return, during their stay in these seas. As soon, however, as Martinet brought his prizes into Calao, and the Frenchmen had received their shares of the prize-money, forgetting the ancient antipathy of the Spaniards for the French, they gave themselves extravagant airs on shore, by dancing and drinking, which still more incensed the creolians against them, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... surrounded by enemy's ships, who mowed down the men every broadside. At half past eleven o'clock, having only three lower-deck guns that could defend the honour of the flag, it became necessary to put an end to so disproportioned a struggle, and Citoyen Martinet, captain of a frigate, ordered ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... stay in hospital the governor from another prison came to rule over our establishment. He was known to most of the prisoners as "Bread and Water Jack," some called him "Captain Spooney," some "the Lurcher," and others "Mr. Martinet." The patients had just completed their out-of-door exercise, and were standing in file two deep when he first made his appearance. Some of the prisoners whispered, "That's the new governor," and the sound having ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... tortured by rheumatism from the long years of exposure in a damp climate. Because he was not of noble birth, though he had received title of nobility, he was subject to insults at the hands of any petty martinet who came out as officer on the Russian vessels. Against these Baranof usually held his own at Sitka, but they carried back to St. Petersburg slanderous charges against his honesty. Twice he had asked to be allowed to resign. Twice successors had been sent ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... hundred years a mighty change has come over the tastes and fashions of literary life. When The Diary of a Lover of Literature was written, Dr. Hurd, the pompous and dictatorial Bishop of Worcester, was a dreaded martinet of letters, carrying on the tradition of his yet more formidable master Warburton. As people nowadays discuss Verlaine and Ibsen, so they argued in those days about Godwin and Horne Tooke, and shuddered over each fresh incarnation of Mrs. Radcliffe. Soame Jenyns was dead, ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... quartered in the capital. The men were, therefore, in closer touch with the population than would be the case in ordinary regiments. Their commanding officer at this moment was not only an aristocrat but a martinet, and he completely failed to keep his regiment in hand. Trouble had long been brewing in the ranks and culminated in mutiny and riot at the close of June. Making the most of the state of Paris many of the mutinous guardsmen took their liberty and refused ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... to enjoy learning. He liked to see the bright young faces about him, and it was their own fault if he was not liked by his pupils. He was impartial, frank, and perfectly sincere; knew how to keep discipline without being a martinet. He was especially a good instructor for young ladies for he never showed ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... utilised for the important object of cross-fertilisation, being subsequently much increased in quantity and stored in various ways. (10/45. Nectar was regarded by De Candolle and Dunal as an excretion, as stated by Martinet in 'Annal des Sc. Nat.' 1872 tome 14 page 211.) This view is rendered probable by the leaves of some trees excreting, under certain climatic conditions, without the aid of special glands, a saccharine fluid, often called honey-dew. This is the case with the leaves of the lime; ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... the rescue of those desperate men, crouching in shell-holes and fighting day and night for a week without rest. If only Jimmie could have gone right to them! If only it had not been necessary for him to go to a training-camp and submit himself to a military martinet! If only it had not been for war-profiteers, and crooked politicians, and lying, predatory newspapers, and all the other enemies ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... as of relief—or could it have been pleasure? "I quite understand that, madam. He is a martinet. Still, I shall not mind." The same thought was in the mind of each: he was accustomed to serving a hard task-master. "If you don't mind, I shall take O'Toole's place until you find some one else. To-morrow I shall move my belongings ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... be your duty to have some one find the man who offered one of the stolen securities to your friend, and in that way discover the identity of the guilty person. I shall be sorry for him when found; Mr. Gibbs is a martinet when it comes to duty, and the one who took those papers will undoubtedly have occasion to repent ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... here is the sufficient guide, not because it cumbers us with a mass of wretched little prescriptions such as a martinet might give, about all sorts of details of conduct. That is left to profitless casuists like the ancient rabbis. But the broad principles will effloresce into all manner of perfectnesses and all fruits. He that has in his heart these thoughts, that the definition of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... polishing a belt, and who place the whole Ars recondita of military discipline in pipe-clay, heel-ball and the goose step. Fortunately for this army, the Duke of Wellington has too much good sense to be a martinet and the good old times are gone by, thank God, when a soldier used to be sentenced to two or three hundred lashes for having a dirty belt or being without a queue. To the Duke of York also is humanity much indebted for his endeavours to check the frequency of corporal ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... a strenuous rivalry between the two theatres of Milan, La Scala and the Carcano. The vocal company at the latter comprised Pasta, Lina Koser (now Mme. Balfe), Elisa Orlandi, Eugenie Martinet, and other ladies; Kubini, Mariani, and Galli being the leading male singers. The composers were Bellini, Donizetti, and Majocchi. At the Scala, which was still under the direction of Crivelli, then a very old man, were Giulietta ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... with me, and I'll place you as right guide," called Cadet Brayton with the air and tone of a budding military martinet. ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... place under those governors who succeeded Alexander Macdonell—the Grasshopper Governor. The first of them was Captain Bulger, an unfortunate martinet, though a man of good conscience and high ideals. He had a most uncompromising manner. He quarreled with the Hudson's Bay Company officer at Fort Garry on the one hand, and with old Indian Chief Peguis on the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... on quietly preparing some sandwiches, which in all probability would never be eaten, and Mrs. Carmichael resigned martial occupation for the cutting-out of a baby's pinafore for an East-end child whom she had under her special patronage. But her mind was active and, stern, self-opinionated martinet that she was, she could not altogether crush the regrets that swarmed up in this last reckoning up of her life's activity. Better had her charity and interest been centered on the dirty little children whom she had indignantly tolerated on her compound! Better for them all would it have ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... Fracasse. Martinet though he was, he spoke in grumbling loyalty to his soldiers. "What kind of spirit is there in doing the work of navvies? Spirit! No soldiers ever fought better—in invasion, at least. Look at our losses! Spirit! Westerling drives ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Cockburn, looking back to the days when he was that 'ne'er-do-weel' Harry Cockburn, 'were the last remains of the ball-room discipline of the preceding age. Martinet dowagers and venerable beaux acted as masters and mistresses of ceremonies, and made all the preliminary arrangements. No couple could dance unless each party was provided with a ticket prescribing the precise place, in the ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... of Dragoons. Maximilian of course knew better. What looked like toadying was only profound deference for himself. The royal favorite could discriminate. He could also be the thick-headed, intolerable martinet. The sandy lashes bristled as the American inquired a second time if ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Jacinto," and soon returned with a file of marines, who were drawn up with their muskets on the deck of the "Trent." Every British ship which carries mails carries a regularly commissioned officer of the navy, who is responsible for them. This officer on the "Trent" was somewhat of a martinet, and his protests at this violation of the rights of a neutral vessel were very vigorous. When the first gun was fired, he rushed below, and soon re-appeared in all the resplendent glory of gold lace and brass buttons ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... she took full advantage of the rare opportunity of rendering personal attention and fussed to her heart's content, stripping off the stained overall and substituting a loose velvet wrapper; and then stood over her, a kindly martinet, until the light dinner she had brought was eaten. Afterwards she packed pillows, made up the fire, and administered a particularly nauseous specific emanating from a homeopathic medicine chest that ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... not improve Roberval's temper. The new Viceroy was a soldier and a martinet, and his authority had been defied. With his two hundred colonists, taken from the prisons of France, commanded by young French officers,—a Lament and a La Salle among others,—he proceeded up the coast of Newfoundland to enter the St. Lawrence by Belle Isle. {20} Among his people were ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Sub-Warden down to the scouts. Heads of houses were kept in order by their wives; but I assure you the jolly god came very near Mr. Vice-Chancellor himself. There was old Dr. Sturdy of St. Michael's, a great martinet in his time. One day the King passed through Oxford; Sturdy, a tall, upright, iron-faced man, had to meet him in procession at Magdalen Bridge, and walked down with his pokers before him, gold and silver, vergers, cocked hats, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... for you our fellows didn't catch you," said Peter. "Our captain's a regular little martinet. He'd shoot you as soon as look at you, if he saw you fooling round with a wounded nigger. It's lucky you kept out ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... The vast extent of our line of operations, and the wide tracts of disaffected country which were, or might easily have been, left behind it, offered an ample field for a training as thorough as the most rigid martinet could desire, at a safe distance from any enemy in force, but where they would have been kept under the qui vive by the belief that something was intrusted to them. Drill or no drill, I do not think there was a colonel in the barracks who did not know that his men would have been worth more if ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the full importance of careful preparation, and the establishment by order and system in every branch and department of the service. No martinet of the schools was ever more alive to the necessity of rigid method and exact discipline, for he knew that without their inauguration and strict observance, it would be impossible to even partially discharge the duties of his vast commission. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... assigned to the watch that night, but he could not sleep for a long time. Among these borderers there was discipline, but it was discipline of their own kind, not that of the military martinet. Ned was free to go about as he chose, and he went to the great plaza into which they had driven the cattle. Some supplies of hay had been gathered for them, and having eaten they were now all at rest in a herd, packed close against the western ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the office. Actually, it worked smoothly enough that little effort was demanded of him. The Czech employees handled almost all the details. Evidently, the word of his evening on the town had somehow spread, and the fact that he was prone to a good time had relieved their fears of a martinet sent down from the central offices. They were beginning to ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... martinet in her way, and she demanded all the privileges of her sex. Whiskie always gave her precedence, and once when he, for a moment, forgot himself and started to go out of the dining-room door before her, she deliberately slapped ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... in the course of his narrative by the President, General W., a severe martinet, who reminded him that an attempt to criminate his superior officers would only injure his cause ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... approval when he enlarged on the merits of Kincaid and when he pledged all his powers of invention to speed the bridal. Frantic to think what better to do, she waltzed with him, while he described the colonel of the departing regiment as such a martinet that to ask him to delay his going would only hasten it; waltzed on when she saw her grandmother discover the knife's absence and telegraph her a look of contemptuous wonder. But ah, how time was flying! Even now Kincaid must be ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... for so much in society, and which it is so pleasant to find combined with much else that is valuable. A few evenings since, he kept Annie and me in the library, with his agreeable chat, till so late an hour, that Col. Donaldson, who is the least bit of a martinet in his own family, gave some very intelligible hints to us the next morning, at breakfast, on the value of early hours. With a readiness and grace which I never saw surpassed, Mr. Arlington turned to us with the exquisite apology of the poet ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... that has been the key to most of the sublime surprises of all war. The commander, whose men sit that way in the saddle and toss those jokes shoulder over shoulder down the line, dare tackle forlorn hopes that would seem sheer leap-year lunacy to the martinet with twenty ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... a year, there had been an officer stationed at the Academy who had been a source of discord among his fellow-officers, and a martinet with the midshipmen. He was small, petty, unjust, and not above resorting to methods despised by his confreres. He was loathed by the midshipmen because they could never count upon what they termed "a square deal," and consequently never knew just ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... all places! She was married at eighteen to a young officer; they ran away, and I believe grandpa never forgave her. He was a General, a strict old martinet, and she was his favourite daughter. After they had been married a couple of years, Aunt Flora's husband was killed in an accident and she was left rather badly off. People out there were very kind to her. She had been hurt in the accident and was laid up for months. Then this rich German asked her ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... so. Most of her life had been passed among soldiers. Her father had been a general in the Artillery. Her two brothers were serving in India. Her husband had been a bluff and straightforward man of action, full of hard commonsense, and the sterling virtues that so often belong to the martinet. Mr. Amarinth and Lord Reggie were specimens of manhood totally strange to her—until now she had not realised that such people existed. All the opinions which she had hitherto believed herself to hold in common ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Like its adjacent rooms, the cabin was untenanted; the watch was the mate's, and Stryker a martinet. Kirkwood found the designated locker and, opening it, saw first to his hand the familiar bulky red volume with its red garter. Taking it out he carried it to a chair near the companionway, for a better reading light: the skylight being ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... she had done many a time before, and did not perceive his condition till she saw the blood on her gown. The cowardly assailant was never discovered; but Mel was both gallant and had, in his military career, the reputation of being a martinet. Hence, divers causes were suspected. The wound failed not to mend, the trousers were repaired: Peace about the same time was made, and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not Chopinesque." Yet Halle heard Chopin at his last Paris concert, February, 1848, play the two forte passages in the Barcarolle "pianissimo and with all sorts of dynamic finesse." This is precisely what Rubinstein did, and his pianissimo was a whisper. Von Bulow was too much of a martinet to reveal the poetic quality, though he appreciated Chopin on the intellectual side; his touch was not beautiful enough. The Slavic and Magyar races are your only true Chopin interpreters. Witness Liszt the magnificent, Rubinstein a passionate genius, Tausig who ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... "married to a regular martinet who, whilst treating her in the same austere manner he treated his soldiers—he was colonel of a line regiment—was jealous to the verge of insanity. It was when I was attending him for a slight ailment of the throat that ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... a shocking nuisance," she said, coolly. "Besides, it would not be allowed. You will find that when my father has once marshalled you, escape is a thing not to be dreamed of. Every one says that he is a perfect martinet where a day's ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... survives{97}. The 'tontine' was conceived by an Italian named Tonti; and another Italian, Galvani, first noted the phenomena of animal electricity or 'galvanism'; while a third Italian, 'Volta', gave a name to the 'voltaic' battery. 'Martinet', 'mackintosh', 'doyly', 'brougham', 'to macadamize', 'to burke', are all names of persons or from persons, and then transferred to things, on the score of some connection existing between ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... beheld from a distance; and it loses none of its attractions when you look at it more closely. There is no such thing as a straight street in the place. No martinet of an architect has been here, to drill the old stone houses into regimental regularity. Sometimes you go down steps into the ground floor, sometimes you mount an outside staircase to get to the bed-rooms. Never were ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... of leadership as few men—ancient or modern—ever possessed it, a man whose word is known to be unbreakable, whose hands are clean, whose record is stainless—the Field-Marshal, Lord Roberts. The man who is to rule South Africa must be a great soldier, not a tyrant, not a martinet, not a bundle of red tape tied up with a Downing Street bow and adorned with frills. The negro trouble is looming large on the African borders, and the negro chiefs know that in Lord Roberts they have their master. We must ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... opened and Kerry came in. He had arisen and completed his toilet in several seconds less than five minutes. But his spotlessly neat attire would have survived inspection by the most lynx-eyed martinet in the Brigade of Guards. As he smiled at his visitor with fierce geniality, Mollie ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... that grow harder to understand the more we think about them. It is a well-known fact that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it fast. A strange instance of man's unconcern and brazen boldness in ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sleeve across his face, and when he took it down to the astonishment of the watchers there were streaks of blood marking both cheeks and nose. Evidently General von Berthold was considerable of a bully and tyrant when in his cups, even as he may have been a severe martinet ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... return to France the keys of Metz and Strasburg, and had he had the ability—which others have denied for him—to coalesce with France and Russia he would have been warlord indeed. As it is, failing in an effort to realize the dream of Napoleon I., he has at present writing subsided into a martinet. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... tight grasp; brute force, brute strength; coercion &c. 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [ironical]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian[obs3], martinet, stickler, bashaw[obs3], despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres[obs3], birds of prey, raptorials[obs3], raptors[obs3]. V. be -severe &c. adj. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Germans. One element in Germany's present efficiency must become more and more of an encumbrance as the years pass. The Germanic idea is deeply interwoven with the traditional Empire and with the martinet methods of the Prussian monarchy. The intellectual development of the Germans is defined to a very large extent by a court-directed officialdom. In many things that court is still inspired by the noble traditions of education and discipline that come from the days of German ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... difficult to quote both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, who on more than one occasion have manifested their enthusiastic adherence to the gospel of brute force. The world is not likely to forget the Crown Prince's congratulations to the brutal military martinet of the Zabern incident, and still less the shameful fact that when the Kaiser sent his punitive expedition to China, he who once stood within sight of the Mount of Olives and preached a sermon breathing the spirit of Christian humility, said ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... was quickly solved. Two Mexicans stood at respectful attention as he approached. Bob was dismayed for a moment, but then, seeing their awkward salute, he chuckled inwardly. They mistook him for Von Arnheim and evidently that German officer was a martinet who exacted a measure of discipline from ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... the doctor was a man of sense. If he had been a martinet, it would have been worse for us all. Of course, there is no telling how far people will accept the story; but we may as well try to act as if it were true." There was a pause. Then Bobby inquired, "Well, and now what are ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... burial before the corps left the hill; whereupon the face of the young girl more fully repaid him by its expression of true gratitude, than did even her words of sad thankfulness. There are men who have called Colonel Warren not only a martinet but a man devoid of feeling: let his action on this occasion prove how little those know him who ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... for a time his behaviour rarely gave occasion for blame. But in the circle of the younger officers he let fall dark insinuations that he would be revenged for the "insult" which the hateful martinet Guentz had inflicted on him. He gradually worked up a genuine hatred of Guentz, and this hatred took an important place in his previously empty life. He vowed Guentz must stand in front of his pistol, even if it cost him his officer's sword-knot. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... exterior, the news inspired the hope that here was the talisman which would reveal the hidden treasures of his nature. The stiff form would now unbend; the political leader would figure as a genial host; the martinet would become a man. Assuredly their estimate was correct. Pitt's nature needed more glow, wider sympathies, a freer expression. A happy marriage would in any case have widened his outlook and matured his character. But a union with Eleanor ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... of her. "No men cooks about me", growls Sir Humphrey Desart, "we'll keep Sarah." So Sarah is kept, and though she be fat, aye, and getting on to three score, yet her strength faileth not, as you may observe. Somewhat of a martinet, yet kindly withal and leading the hubbub in the kitchen with all the gusto of twenty years ago. My lady will descend presently to see if all goes on properly, and Sarah must lose no time. Heavens, how many eggs is she going to break? What are they all for? Will not the ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... Carlisle, soldier as he was, martinet as he was, felt a curious sensation of helplessness seize upon him as he met her, steady gaze, her alluring smile; he could not tell what this prisoner might do. He cursed the fate which had assigned such ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... good fortune, by putting boldness into our play. Pippi was a faint-hearted fellow, who was always cowardly when he began to win. My uncle (I speak with great respect of him) was too much of a devotee, and too much of a martinet at play ever to win GREATLY. His moral courage was unquestionable, but his daring was not sufficient. Both of these my seniors very soon acknowledged me to be their chief, and hence the style of splendour I ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Martinet! thought Rachel, nearly ready to advocate the boys making no toilette at any time; and the present was made to consume so much time that, urged by her, Fanny once more was obliged to summon her ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... found in the rag-picker's sweepings," growled a General of Division, who was the most terrible martinet in the whole of the French service, but who loved "my children of hell," as he was wont to term his men, with a great love, and who would never hear another disparage them, however he might order them blows of the stick, or exile ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Overbury. Under pressure of the accusation based on the missing trinkets, Waad accepted L1400 from Sir Gervase Elways, with a promise of L600 more, and vacated his office. Elways became an accomplice in Overbury's murder, and was hanged on his own Tower Hill. But he was less of a martinet than his predecessor. Perhaps his patrons were engaged in too serious crimes to waste their energy in inciting him to petty persecutions of Ralegh. At all events, Ralegh recovered the liberty of the Tower; and the restrictions on the presence ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... and sullen morosity. No smile ever lights up this "humane" Czar's face. His uneasy glance is that of the misanthrope; his brow seems overcast as with the lowering shadow of a tragic fate. The harsh way in which he was brought up by his martinet father, without the slightest regard for his somewhat delicate health, no doubt laid a foundation for this pensive sadness, which, under a pernicious Court atmosphere, and with the terrible recollections crowding about his family ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... fire, however hot, and no crisis, however unexpected, could take him by surprise; he grasped the situation in a moment, and issued his orders without hesitation, inspiring all ranks with confidence in his power and capacity. He was somewhat of a martinet, and was more feared than liked by his men until they realized what a grand leader he was, when they gave him their entire confidence, and were ready to follow him ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... personage, whose prototype we look for in vain among the dignitaries of Lad-lane, or the Bull-and-Mouth, and whose very name can only be translated by borrowing one of Mr. M'Adam's titles—"the Colossus of Roads." With fur cap, official garb, and the excursive eye of a martinet, he inspects every detail of preparation—sees each passenger stowed seriatim in his special place—then takes his position in front—gives the word to his jack-booted vice, whose responsive whip cracks assent—and away rolls the ponderous machine, with all the rumbling majesty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... company or regimental service. He was, however, so profoundly devoted to the military profession in a larger way, that at times he gave to those less learned than himself the idea that he was a pedant in knowledge and a martinet on duty. With imperturbable self-possession, great lucidity of statement and a decidedly deliberate and austere manner, he was widely recognized as a masterful man, who won easily and without effort the respect and admiration, not only of the cadets who fell under ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... Vincent. 28m. from Gap is Le Lauzet, pop. 1000, Inn: France, surrounded by great mountains, with narrow gorges and lofty waterfalls. In the neighbourhood is a lake abounding with trout. 3 m. higher up is the hamlet of Martinet, at the entrance to the beautiful valley of the Laverq, extending to the S. side of Mt. Siolane, on whose slopes the spire of the church of Meolans occupies a prominent position. From Martinet the road crosses to the right side of the Ubaye, whence, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... seriez que Perrette ou Margot,[133] quand je vous aurois vue, le martinet a la main, descendre a la cave, vous auriez toujours ete ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... excellent friend, who married some ten years ago, and now has her own cares and troubles in a domestic establishment consisting of her husband and herself, five children, and two servants. Like a large majority of those similarly situated, Mrs. Martinet finds her natural stock of patience altogether inadequate to the demand therefor; and that there is an extensive demand will be at once inferred when I mention that four of her ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... it a bit," continued Wheatley; "the less so since it is rumoured that old 'Rough and Ready' is to be recalled, and we're to be commanded by that book martinet Scott. It's shabby treatment of Taylor, after what the old vet has accomplished. They're afraid of him setting up for President next go. Hang their politics! It's ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... a little astounded—rose, and then recovering himself, proceeded to reply with the air of a veteran martinet. ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Corporal, after he had communicated from his own pipe the friendly flame to his comrade's; "tell you what—talk nonsense; the commander-in-chief's no Martinet—if we're all right in action, he'll wink at a slip word or two. Come, no humbug—hold jaw. D'ye think God would sooner have snivelling fellow like you in his regiment, than a man like me, clean limbed, straight as a dart, six ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... assert themselves in a manner contrary to the prevailing characteristics of a region. Instead of the easy- going habits of life common to so many of his neighbors, Mr. Baron was a martinet by nature, and the absence of large, engrossing duties permitted his mind to dwell on little things and to exaggerate them out of all proportion. Indeed, it was this utter lack of perspective in his views and judgments which created for Miss Lou half her trouble. The sin of tardiness which she ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray, a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,—the king, staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined, martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it victualled, it ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... book is the portrait of Parris, the minister of Salem Village, in whose household the children who, under the assumed possession of evil spirits, became accusers and witnesses, began their tricks. He is shown to us pedantic and something of a martinet in church discipline and ceremony, somewhat inclined to magnify his office, fond of controversy as he was skilful and rather unscrupulous in the conduct of it, and glad of any occasion to make himself prominent. Was he the unconscious agent of his own superstition, or did he take ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... always signs his name: Captain Sir Henry Quill, Bart. And since he's the toughest old martinet this side of the Pleiades, the 'Black' part just comes naturally. I served under him seven years ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... innings. I must confess I do not find this attitude of his merely ridiculous. It forces clearly upon the modern world the question of kingship, whether it is to be a sham or a reality. Unpopular as William II. has made himself by his martinet methods—ridiculous, if you will—yet there is only one step from the ridiculous to the sublime. In a flippant age he takes himself seriously, has a sense of a responsible relation to his people. Have you seen the cartoon ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... frock-coat and white trousers; a flower stuck in his button-hole, his bearded chin set forward, his mouth clenched with habitual determination. There was not much of the sailor in his looks, but plenty of the martinet; a dry, precise man, who might pass for a preacher in some rigid sect; and, whatever he was, not the Captain Trent of San Francisco. The men, too, were all new to me: the cook, an unmistakable Chinaman, in his characteristic dress, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... think of, suspended Toby's animation beyond all hope. William instantly fell upon him, upsetting his milk and cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his own intense relief; and, being late, he got from Pyper, who was a martinet, the customary palmies, which he bore with something approaching to pleasure. So died Toby; my father said little, but he missed and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... with, the novel-attractions are presented with a completeness which, as has been pointed out in the last chapter, is almost entirely lacking before. There is, of course, not very much plot, in the martinet sense of that word: there never was in Richardson, despite his immense apparatus and elaboration. The story is not knotted and unknotted; the wheel does not come full circle on itself; it merely runs along ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... which are quite new, and the quarters of the battalion of the standing army. The barrack rooms are spotlessly clean, and the order and neatness unsurpassed, which, together with the smart drilling and superb physique of the soldiers, would delight the heart of the severest martinet. Everything connected with the military training of the Montenegrins is up to the standard of Continental excellence. All the officers undergo a long course of training, either in Russia, France, or Italy, and right well have ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... was spent in the tilt-yard, where his two friends, as well as himself, were anxious that he should acquire proficiency and ease such as would become his station, when he recovered it; and a martinet old squire of Oxford proved himself nearly as hard a master as ever ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sisters, one of whom died. His father was a wealthy man, and had built himself a small country house, and planted the few acres of ground round it very skillfully. Major Hamilton was a very religious man, of the self-sufficient, puritanical, and evangelical type, that issues from discipline; a martinet in his regiment, a domestic tyrant, without intending to be. He did not marry till rather late in life; and at the time when Arthur was growing up—the time when memory intwines itself most lingeringly with its surroundings, the time which comes ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he's quite pleased," she answered, whipping up the fat pony, who responded reluctantly. "But he's a fearful martinet. He nearly frightens me to death when he gets into one of his royal Italian rages—though he's always particularly sweet afterwards! Pobs, I wonder who my man in the train ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... not see to pick our way. Splashed from head to foot, and wet through for hours, we had then one of the most dismal experiences I remember. I had not been well since the terrible heat of the 15th, and Strahan, putting on the air of a martinet, sternly ordered me to mount his horse while he took ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... of floating palace. The Nelson having been only a despatch-boat, it had given them but an indifferent idea of a man-of-war. On board the Yankee every thing was kept in apple-pie order. Discipline was maintained with martinet strictness. The fittings shone like a mirror. The brass cappings glistened in the sun. Complicated rolls of cable were profusely scattered about, but without confusion. The deck always seemed as fresh as if it had been planked the day before. The ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... luxurious times a sense of discipline and a cultivation of endurance. Its comradeship brought classes together so closely that the easy relationship between officers and men in the 1st line Territorial unit of 1914-1915 was the despair of the more crusted Regular martinet. Its joyous amateurism freed it from every trace of the mental servitude which is the curse of militarism, and stimulated initiative and individuality. Long before the War, most Territorials believed in universal training, not so much on ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... reason for her abrupt determination to leave the country; but from subsequent talk Polly gathered that, for one thing, Zara had found her position at the head of John's establishment—"Undertaken in the first place, my dear, at immense personal sacrifice!"—no sinecure. John had proved a regular martinet; he had countermanded her orders, interfered about the household bills—had even accused her of lining her own pocket. As for little Johnny—the bait originally thrown out to induce her to accept the post—he had long since ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... lacerated by contact with volunteers, who cared next to nothing for the FORM of war-making, but everything for its spirit, and the martinet heart within him was bruised and sore when he came upon the ground ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... and governor of Neuchatel, informing him of my retreat into the states of his Prussian majesty, and requesting of him his protection. He answered me with his well-known generosity, and in the manner I had expected from him. He invited me to his house. I went with M. Martinet, lord of the manor of Val de Travers, who was in great favor with his excellency. The venerable appearance of this illustrious and virtuous Scotchman, powerfully affected my heart, and from that instant began between him and me the strong attachment, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... maintained that without rigid discipline there could be no order and no safety at home or in the army. But between him and Don John there was all the difference that separates the born leader of men from the mere martinet. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... accepted by the most cautious modern authorities do not always inspire complete confidence. Martinet is supposed to come from the name of a well-known French officer who re-organised the French infantry about 1670. But we find it used by Wycherley in 1676, about forty years before Martinet's death. Moreover this application of the name is unknown in French, which has, however, a word martinet meaning a kind of cat-o'-nine-tails. In English martinet means the leech-line of a sail, hence, possibly, rope's end, and Wycherley ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and said, "Good evening, gentlemen," with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary and social. He had a large head streaked with black and grey, and an abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... appeared upon the scene a new Director—a military man, and a martinet as regarded his hostility to bribe-takers and anything which might be called irregular. On the very day after his arrival he struck fear into every breast by calling for accounts, discovering hosts of deficits and missing sums, and directing his attention to the aforesaid ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... defend their colors. Such a distribution of guns would strengthen the body of the volunteers. But it seems that McClellan has no confidence in the volunteers. Were this true, it would denote a small, very small mind. Let us hope it is not so. One of his generals—a martinet of the first class—told me that McClellan waits for the organization of the regulars, to have them for the defence of the guns. If so, it is sheer nonsense. These narrow-minded West Point martinets will become the ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... negroes, after staring at Nick, quite a minute, set up a loud shout, laughing as if the Tuscarora had been created for their special amusement. Although the captain was somewhat of a martinet in his domestic discipline, it had ever altogether exceeded his authority, or his art, to prevent these bursts of merriment; and he led his wife away from the din, leaving Mari', Great Smash, and Little Smash, with the two Plinies, in ecstasies at their own uproar. Burst succeeded burst, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... be there, never fear. My! isn't this rippin'? How does the old soldier make the men keep such order, I wonder! Lem Hunt must be as great a martinet as he is talker. ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... "will not make that martinet's error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... after which Mary went to her reward, and Elizabeth came to her inheritance. She was no more of a religion-monger than her distinguished father had been; but she was, like him, jealous of her authority, and a martinet for order and obedience at all costs. A certain intellectual voluptuousness of nature and an artistic instinct inclined her to the splendid forms and ceremonies of the Catholic ritual; but she was too good a politician not to understand that a large part of her subjects were unalterably opposed ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Les Polynesiens; leur Origine, leurs Migrations, leur Langage. By Pierre Adolph Lesson. Edited by Ludovic Martinet. ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... Raymonde scornfully. "I flatter myself I'm pretty good at reading faces, and I can see at a glance he's a martinet. That frown gives him away, and the kind of glare he has in his eyes. I'm a believer in first impressions, and I knew in a second I wasn't ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... prisoner charged with desertion to the enemy. "Marion released him, saying to me, 'let him go, he is too worthless to deserve the consideration of a court martial.'" Such a decision in such a case, would have shocked a military martinet, and yet, in all probability, the fellow thus discharged, never repeated the offence, and fought famously afterwards in the cause of his merciful commander. We have something yet to learn on these subjects. ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... or popish Recusants Convict.' Among the 'Grievances and Distresses' enumerated were 'the oppressive and severely felt Military government,' the inability to 'reap the fruit of our Industry' under such a martinet as Murray, who, in one paragraph, is accused of 'suppressing dutyfull Remonstrances in Silence' and, in the next, of 'treating them with a Rage and Rudeness of Language and Demeanor as dishonourable to the Trust he holds of Your ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... mossy knolls where the animals sought refuge from the summer heat of the open and smoothly-shaven lawn. Here and there, on the soft, green sward, was presented that vegetable antithesis, a circlet of martinet poplars standing vis-a-vis to a clump of willows whose long hair threw quivering, fringy shadows when the slanting rays of dying sunlight burnished the white and purple petals nestling among the clover tufts. Rustic seats of bark, cane and metal were scattered ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... from the following extracts, was much a martinet, and had a habit of expressing himself on paper with an almost startling emphasis. Personally, with his powerful voice, sanguine countenance, and eccentric and original locutions, he was well qualified to inspire a salutary terror ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mischievously and, when occasion demanded, his retort was swift and edged with wit. Now and then he made reprisals, for when, as happened once or twice, a load of gravel nearly swept the foreman down the bank, Kermode was engaged in the vicinity. Another time, the bullying martinet was forced to jump into the muskeg, where he sank to the waist, in order to avoid a mass of ballast sent down before ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... that rehearsal, but the great man himself had not arrived. Now Mr. Bassett Oliver, as every man well knew who ever had dealings with him, was not one of the irregular and unpunctual order; on the contrary, he was a very martinet as regarded rule, precision and system; moreover, he always did what he expected each member of his company to do. Therefore his non-arrival, his half hour of irregularity, seemed ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... Belchior was more than a martinet. He was known as "Bucko" Belchior in every port where the English language is spoken, having earned this prefix by the earnest readiness with which, in his days as second and chief mate, he would whirl belaying-pins, heavers, and handspikes about ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... one better than this, for a man who was totally unfit for the service having one day shown him some trifling disrespect, the choleric old martinet promptly set the gang upon him and had him conveyed on board the tender, "where," says Lieut. Collingwood, writing a month later, "he has been eating the king's victuals ever since." [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 1501 —Lieut. Collingwood, 18 ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... carriage, to a degree unusual to a naval officer of his period. This may have been due partly to early training, but still more, I think, in his case, was an outcome and evidence of personal character; for, though kindly and just, he was essentially a martinet. He had been further presented to me, colloquially, by my old friend the boatswain of the Congress, some of whose shrewd comments I have before quoted, and who had sailed with him as a captain. "Oh! what a proud man he was!" he would say. "He would walk ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... great-grandchild of Benjamin Franklin, was one of my earliest Philadelphia friends—a splendid type of the independent woman, a bit of the martinet, but immensely full of kindness and humor. She had a word to say in all Philadelphian matters. It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast to Mrs. Gillespie of Philadelphia than Mrs. Fields of Boston, that other great American lady ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... cheer him up, but she was not herself very hopeful. She, perceived too clearly the martinet in him and the rebel in Cicely. If something were suddenly to throw them together, some common interest or emotion, each might find the other's heart in a way past undoing. On the other hand the jarring habit, once set ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... rough and ready. Their appearance would hardly have captivated a martinet. The eye that lingers lovingly on glittering buttons and spotless belts would have turned away in disdain from Jackson's soldiers. There was nothing bright about them but their rifles. They were as badly dressed, and with as little regard for uniformity, as ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... the command of a midland regimental district. He had the reputation of being somewhat of a martinet, and was not altogether ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various |
