"Martinet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sir," 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 higher his position and ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... overcoats for long route-marches in July, exercised them in sham fights with live grapeshot and unblunted stilettos and otherwise thinned their ranks of undesirables, and hardened their physique, by forcing them to escalade horrible precipices at midnight on horseback. He was a martinet; he knew it; he gloried on the distinction. "All the world loves a disciplinarian," ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Quebec. 'Their fellow Subjects' did not, of course, include any 'papist 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 Majesty as painfull to Those who suffer from it.' Finally, the ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... 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
... which tell 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 ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... range, there was a sudden bright flash. No smoke, only the throb of flame, and then the long sibilant scream of the shell, and the thud as it buried itself in the ground under a limber. Such judgment of range would have delighted the most martinet of inspectors at Okehampton. Bang came another, and another, and another, right into the heart of the battery. The six little guns lay back at their extremest angle, and all barked together in impotent fury. Another ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... L'Isle was a martinet, and this a military heresy. "Keeping the troops up to the mark, fit for instant service, is not a matter of form; and that is the end of parades and inspections. But," added he, smiling, "I am not surprised at your mistake; for I find, on coming to Elvas, that many of my brother officers ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Williams. 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 of pure voluptuousness, entirely disinterested, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... 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, row, From the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99., August 2, 1890. • Various
... the daughter 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
... sour 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 history, gradually changed into the fierceness ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... to the head-quarters of the Upper Fourth. The classroom was rather quieter than the one he had left, Mr. Rowlands being somewhat of a martinet. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... no 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 ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... 'I suppose it will be all right to let the Savannah have that hose for a day or two, won't it?' why, the captain of the yard would have said, 'Why, yes, sir, let 'em have it.' But he hadn't yet sized up this new commandant. He only knew he had the reputation of being a martinet aboard ship, and now came this formal letter with its endorsement and right away the yard captain said to himself, 'He's a strict one—an endorsement on it already, and that Savannah captain, he must be a strict one, too. ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... famous phrases 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 the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the 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 buttoned up to the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... accounts of visits to the opera, to museums, plays, dinners, and pleasant evenings spent with friends. Keats is again met, and Shelley calls on Mr. Baxter, who is not allowed by his son-in-law to say farewell to Mary Shelley: such a martinet may a Scotch schoolmaster be. Mary Lamb calls, and visits are paid and received till the last evening arrives, when Shelley, exhausted with ill-health, fatigue, and excitement, fell into one of his profound ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... 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
... then, rather a different man from the stern little martinet who had stood in the throat of the arcade. He ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... in less time than we have taken to relate it, the marine was completely equipped for his departure. In the mean time, Captain Borroughcliffe raised himself to an extremely erect posture, which he maintained with the inflexibility of a rigid martinet. When he found himself established on his feet, the soldier intimated to his prisoner that he was ready to proceed. The door was instantly opened by Manual, and together they entered ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... still stands, the largest and most beautiful tree in the city). Captain Benedict Hippler, an old soldier who had seen service in Germany, took command, and men and boys armed with all sorts of guns were drilled continually by the Captain, who was a martinet and at one time threatened to shoot me and a companion for sleeping on our post. It was found that Stevens the Indian trader at Mille Lacs had a large stock of powder, and H. A. Pemberton was sent to haul it away, which he did with Stevens mules, bringing it to ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... was 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 colours to ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison
... one occasion, Horry tells us that he carried before him a 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 result of ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the sun was about an hour high over the western hills. He found the captain waiting patiently for him to awake, and then that useful martinet instantly set his crew at tying up the bales which had been torn open, placing them once more in the hold. He was about to do the same with the weapons captured from Furstenberg, but Greusel stepped forward, ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... 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, ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... numerous, but they were marked. The chief police magistrate he compared to the lamplighter, by whom gas is detested. In praising that officer's administrative talent, he observed that he belonged to the martinet school, and that his estimate of human nature ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... type and model of a soldier and a gentleman, and he 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
... that we were ready to start. We had secured a master with a certificate, for though I was myself a master mariner, and my mate had been in charge of our vessel in the North Sea for many years, we had neither of us been across the Atlantic before. The skipper was a Cornishman, Trevize by name, and a martinet on discipline—an entirely new experience to a crew of North Sea fishermen. He was so particular about everything being just so that quite a few days were lost in starting, though well spent as far as preparedness went. Nothing was wanting when at last, in the second week of June, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... 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 not pander to them to the injury of the Dutch, or how are we to weld ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... sir!" he said with a certain dignity which Fracasse, who was a good deal of a martinet, ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... top to toe as a Uhlan full lieutenant. He stood before the small glass tacked in the corner and twirled and stiffened his mustache with pomatum. When he turned and strode before Ruth again he was the typical haughty martinet who demanded of the rank and file the goose-step and "right face salute" ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... occasion, when appealing to a German Brigadier-General on behalf of some homeless women and children, the Prussian martinet—half pedant and half poltroon—answered her with a quotation from Nietzsche to the effect that "Pity is a waste of feeling—a moral parasite injurious to the health." She early felt the cruel and iron will of the invader, ...
— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck
... 'alaili,' Turkish officers—those whose whole knowledge of their business was derived from service in a regiment or 'alai,' instead of from instruction at a military school; and his manner towards the men had nothing of the martinet. He addressed them as 'my children,' with affection; and they, though quite respectful, conversed freely in his presence. Hasan Agha paid me many compliments, and repeatedly inquired after my health. He would not hear about my business till ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... a point of getting drunk, the whole college, from the Vice-Principal or 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 ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... 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
... soldiers kept permanently 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 to return to barracks. Clearly what ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... said that General Werder acted under superior orders. But, sir, you must perceive that in these discretionary situations there is no such dangerous man as the innocent executant, the martinet, the person of routine, the soldier stifled in his uniform. I saw Werder after the capitulation. A little man, lean and bilious. Such was the opponent who reversed for us successively, like the premisses of an argument, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... the aunts, only petting and indulging her as a child; looking down on her fancies, and smiling at her sauciness when she was an enthusiastic maiden—treatment which she had so much resented, that she had direfully offended Maurice by pronouncing William a mere martinet, when she was hurt at his neither reading the Curse of Kehama, nor entering into her plans for ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... empire, social, political, fiscal, military, and municipal; but he also held in his own hands the threads of all its complicated machinery. He was strict in matters of routine, and appears to have been almost a martinet among his legions: yet in social intercourse he lived on terms of familiarity with inferiors, combining the graces of elegant conversation with the bonhomie of boon companionship, displaying a warm heart to his friends, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... breech-loading rifle in ours. The old inefficient 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 of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... the way even of the union of indisputable 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 ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... into a neat little roll, and slipping out the back way went down to leave it at the florist's, to be sent to Dorothy— securely hidden in a big bunch of English violets, lest any martinet of a nurse should see fit to suppress it—the very first thing in the morning. On the way back to her room she danced up the stairs in her most joyous fashion, and when Mary Brooks, coming up from escorting Roberta to the door, intercepted her and demanded where she ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... the generalissimo in his flag-ship. In the squadron of Andalusia were ten galleons and other vessels, under General Pedro de Valdez. In the squadron of Biscay were ten galleons and lesser ships, under General Juan Martinet de Recalde, upper admiral of the fleet. In the squadron of Guipuzcoa were ten galleons, under General Miguel de Oquendo. In the squadron of Italy were ten ships, under General Martin de Bertendona. In the squadron of Urcas, or store-ships, were twenty-three ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ne seriez que Perrette ou Margot,[133] quand je vous aurois vue, le martinet a la main, descendre a la cave, vous auriez toujours ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... 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 ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... 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 when ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... races had begun. Hardy had thrown himself into the spirit of them so thoroughly, that he had not only regained all his hold on Tom, but had warmed up the whole crew in his favour, and had mollified the martinet Miller himself. It was he who had managed the starting-rope in every race, and his voice from the towing path had come to be looked upon as a safe guide for clapping on or rowing steady. Even Miller, autocrat as he was, had ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... Rockharrt looked puzzled and troubled, but the minister was pronouncing the general absolution that followed the general confession, and such a severe martinet and disciplinarian as old Aaron Rockharrt would on no account fail in attention to ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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, ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... part. It was as if he was beginning to feel an inherited need for talk, and was a little at a loss for a sympathetic ear. Park, his schoolmate, who had enlisted with him, wasn't, it seemed, a theoriser. "Park becomes a martinet," Hugh wrote. "Also he is a sergeant now, and this makes rather a gulf between us." Mr. Britling had the greatest difficulty in writing back. There were many grave deep things he wanted to say, and never did. Instead he gave elaborate details of the small affairs of the Dower House. Once or twice, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... Master George—who, as we have already noticed, was something of a martinet in domestic discipline—"what does umph mean? Will you do mine ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... had its political significance which the military martinet who commanded the post understood. It was the way the people of Piedmont expressed to him and the world their contempt for the farce of an election he had conducted, and their indifference as to the result he would celebrate with many ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... perhaps environment and personnel of teacher, and possibly somewhat in season of the year, almost as sharply as work differs from play, or perhaps as the virility of man that loves to command a phalanx, be a martinet and drill-master, differs from femininity which excels in persuasion, sympathetic insight, story-telling, and in the tact that discerns and utilizes spontaneous interests in ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... fort and extensive forest of St. 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 ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... besides those referred to by this eminent critic, might be cited, even from the latest Standard Prayer Book, that of 1871. It is hard, for instance, to imagine even the veriest martinet in such matters objecting to the redress of a great wrong done on page 36 of the volume mentioned, where the prayer "to be used at the meetings of Convention" is entered under the general heading, "For malefactors after ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... or in the daily routine of 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 ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... for a stricter martinet than Mr. Huntingdon did not breathe; but I glanced down at the small innocent face at my side, and cordially approved of his ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... 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 they utilised this privilege. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... this case, Herndon's 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, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... was Orbilius Pupillus, a grammarian, who had carried into his school his martinet habits as an old soldier; and who, thanks to Horace, has become a name (plagosus Orbilius, Orbilius of the birch) eagerly applied by many a suffering urchin to modern pedagogues who have resorted to the same material means of inculcating the beauties of the classics. ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... watched our 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 ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... grinned Jack, "they went and got taken prisoners by a martinet of a fellow and a dwarf, and I had to go and get them out. Say! But you wait a second, and I'll ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft of his character. The Lieutenant-Colonel of the regiment, an old cross-tempered martinet, did not choose to indulge the Captain (such was now the rank of Middlemas) in ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... unwonted way; carried him up-stairs in her arms, as 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
... life on the site of the ancient chapel where the crucifix bent and blessed him. As the head of the monastery Gualberto was famous for the severity and thoroughness of his discipline. But though a martinet as an abbot, personally he was humble and mild. His advice on all kinds of matters is said to have been invited even by kings and popes. He invented the system of lay brothers to help with the domestic work of the convent; and after a life of holiness, ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... general, his fellow staff officers, speaking enthusiastically of her beauty and fascinations and their destructive effects in various quarters? Had he not been compelled in silence to listen again and in detail to the story of old Sam Martindale's nephew?—Sam Martingale, the cavalry called him—"Martinet Martindale" he was dubbed by the "doughboys"—that conscientious, dutiful, and therefore none too popular veteran, whose sister's children much more than supplied the lack of ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Heights Sheaffe succeeded Brock in command of the British, and Smyth succeeded Van Rensselaer in command of the Americans. Sheaffe was a harsh martinet and a third-rate commander. Smyth, a notorious braggart, was no commander at all. He did, however, succeed in getting Sheaffe to conclude an armistice that fully equalled Prevost's in its disregard of British interests. After making the most of it for a month he ended it on November ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... discontents, which the behaviour of the new lieutenant-colonel unfortunately was not calculated to dissipate.—He certainly did not bear his honours meekly, but, on the contrary, gave himself airs of authority, and played the martinet to a useless and ridiculous degree. This, from a mere parade officer, who had never been out of London, to a man like the major—who had seen service and could show wounds—was, to use the mildest expression, ill-judged. Captain Henry said it was intolerable—and ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Bridger's holdings were shared by his wife Hester (Pitt) and six of his seven children. The eldest son was excluded from his inheritance as Colonel Bridger, evidently a martinet with his family as well as in his official capacity, added in the codicil a directive cutting him off with 2000 pounds of tobacco because Joseph Jr. had been disobedient to him and had gone out in "diverse ways." ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... passenger-train would be held aroused all the railroad martinet's fury in the new superintendent. In Lidgerwood's calendar, time-killing on regular trains stood next to an infringement of the rules providing for the safety of life and property. His hand was on the ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... wished his scholars 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 them ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... reasoned, "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, I cannot dodge ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... success at Saratoga had given him great popularity, and some misguided men were advocating his advancement even to the place of General Washington. A short time exposed the folly of all such views. He was, at best, but a martinet, who had learned something of military routine in the camps, but was as devoid of real ability as ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... turned a rifle this way and that in his paws, like a great bear dancing. The Mahsudi with a sore neck could have shot him perhaps, but there are men with whom only the bravest dare try conclusions. In cold gray dawn it would have needed a martinet to make a firing squad do execution on Muhammad Anim, even with his hands tied and his back against a wall. A man whose boils had just been lanced was no match for him at all, even in broad daylight. The Hillman slunk away and ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... judge. This was very discernible on board the vessels we were allowed to inspect, where the utmost order and cleanliness prevailed. The officers, I thought, seemed to exact great deference from the men, and their martinet bearing ill accorded with a republican service, being decidedly more marked than on board British ships of war which I had visited at Deptford, Chatham, and elsewhere in England. Probably a stricter discipline may be found necessary, on account of the equality that exists in America, ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... frontier posts. He deserted us in the end, after he had squandered the fortune. My mother made no effort to compel him to provide for her or for me. She was proud. She was hurt. To-day he is in India, still in the service, a martinet with a record for bravery on the field of battle that cannot be taken from him, no matter what else may befall. I hear from him once or twice a year. That is all I can tell you about him. My mother died three years ago, after two years of invalidism. During those ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... heard 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 all the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... a martinet in spelling, and one day he was going to punish a whole class for failing to spell defied, when Lincoln telegraphed the right letter to a young lady by putting his finger with a significant smile to his eye. Many years later, however, and after his ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... greatly tempted to temporize and say smooth things, lest he should offend and drive her away. But conscience whispered, "Now is your opportunity to speak the 'unvarnished truth,' whatever be the consequences"; and conscience with Hemstead was an imperative martinet. She waited in curious and quiet expectancy. This sincere and unconventional man was delightfully odd and interesting to her. She saw the power and fascination of her beauty upon him, and at the same time perceived ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... after buttering his bread in silence for some minutes, confessed that he loved punctuality. It might be a military prejudice;—it might be too professional, martinet perhaps,—but still he owned he did love punctuality. He considered it as a part of politeness, a proper attention to the convenience and feelings of others; indispensable between strangers it is usually felt to be, and he did not know why intimate friends should deem themselves ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... 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 Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... person. His ancestors were settlers in Ireland of the time of William the Third, and having won their lands by the sword, it is quite natural the love of arms should have been hereditary in the family. Mr. Dawson, therefore, had served many years as a soldier, and was a bit of a martinet, not only in military but all other affairs. His mind was of so tenacious a character, that an impression once received there became indelible; and if the Major once made up his mind, or indulged the belief, that such and such things were so and so, the waters of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... say to you," announced the new sergeant coolly. "I intend to preserve discipline in this squad room, though I don't expect to do it like a martinet. Some of you groaned, just now, when my back was turned. Soldiers of the regular Army are men of courage. No real man fights behind another man's back. Has any man here anything that he wishes to say ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... attempt to skirt the hill and approach at that side. The pieces were heavy, the appliances crude and clumsy, a shrewd east wind was driving in a sea-fog of the chillest description, and Standish, although he toiled and tugged with the best, proved himself a martinet in his requirements, not sparing in the heat of the struggle some of those curious oaths for which "our army in Flanders" gained a name. But the elder turned a deaf ear at these moments, and neither the truly devout Carver, nor ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... collapse. Though Jasper Losely knew himself to be still called a magnificent man,—one of royal Nature's Lifeguardsmen; though confident that from top to toe his habiliments could defy the criticism of the strictest martinet in polite costume, no sooner did that figure, by no means handsome and clad in garments innocent of buckram but guilty of wrinkles, appear on the threshold than Jasper Losely felt small and shabby, as if he had been suddenly reduced to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 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 ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 up, has a way of growing worse, and reducing everything else to ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... their nature dictates. They are not required to conform to 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. It ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... 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 with the rest of sane ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... from cutlass blades pressed to the whirling grindstone. Tubs were filled with hand-grenades and fire-pots, the deck strewn with sand, the magazine opened and powder passed up. Stede Bonnet was careful to see for himself that all things were in order. At such times he was a martinet ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... I could wield more easily than a heavy spade. Besides, Cookie would be less sleuth-like in getting on the trail of his missing property than Mr. Shaw—though there would be a certain piquancy in having that martinet hale me before ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... 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 ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... Richard than he was to her. The reason was not farther to seek than a few doors off in London, when the Ladies Bawne occupied their sombre old corner-house in Grosvenor Square. It was Lady Bridget-Mary's dearest Lucy and bosom-friend, who had married that handsome, grey-moustached martinet, Richard's Colonel. In Lady Lucy Hawting's drawing-room Lord Castleclare's elder daughter had met Captain Mildare, the hero of Futtehabad and Ahmed Khel. The Colonel's wife was a pretty, delicate, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... 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 mourned ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... martial law; iron heel, iron rule, iron hand, iron sway; tight grasp; brute force, brute strength; coercion &c 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [Iron.]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian^, martinet, stickler, bashaw^, despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres^, birds of prey, raptorials^, raptors^. V. be severe &c adj.. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... and more famous one which has Webster among its captains, Dekker among its lieutenants, Heywood among its privates, and Shakespeare at its head. Nor did he by any means follow the banner of Jonson with such automatic fidelity as that imperious martinet of genius was wont to exact from those who came to be "sealed of the tribe of Ben." A rigid critic—a critic who should push rigidity to the verge of injustice—might say that he was one of those recruits in literature whose misfortune it is to fall between two stools—to halt between two ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 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 ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... had 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 ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... her," said Babie. "It might have been in Jessie, if her General was not such a horrid old martinet as to hinder the development; but Essie is much nicer as ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your interview, Judge, but you know we have a martinet in yonder, a regular Turk, and he ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... be a martinet, as they say, in the dockyard," I said; "but he's a kinder chap than ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... drill from Frederick of Prussia; and there is still many a martinet who would carry his high-pressure system of discipline into every other service over which he had any control, unable to appreciate the difference of circumstances under which they may happen to be ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... disorderly habit. Yellow gravel walks intersected smooth lawns. April having drawn almost to its close, there were thin red lines of tulips standing at attention all along the flowery borders. Not a stalk was out of place. One suspected that the flowers had been drilled by a martinet of a gardener. The sight of an honest weed would have been a relief to the eye. The curse of too much gardener and too little nature lay ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... 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 boys ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seemed to 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 by which ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 most keen-scented press-censor could detect the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... responsibility in the Duc d'Enghien affair with their silence on Nelson's in breaking the truce already referred to, and the awful consequences set forth in Mr. Fox's speech, which is reminiscent of the powerful disciplinary methods of that manly martinet Ivan the Terrible, who was responsible for the massacre of men by the thousand, flaying of prisoners alive, collecting pyramids of skulls, slaughtering of innocent men, and the free use of other ingenious forms of refined scientific torture which tires the spirit to relate. It ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... Guilbeaux and his periodical "demain";[39] to P. J. Jouve, author of Vous etes des hommes and of Poeme contre le grand crime, whose sympathetic spirit vibrates and trembles like a tree to the wind of all the pains and all the angers of mankind; to Marcel Martinet, one of the greatest lyricists whom the war (the horror of the war) has brought forth, the writer of Temps maudits, a poem which will for ever bear witness to the suffering and the revolt of a free spirit; to Delemer, that moving writer; and to a few recently founded magazines. The editor of "Les ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... 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 ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... were abroad of an approaching engagement; but it did not take place, and a period of comparative relaxation succeeded one of severe hardship and arduous duty. Men and officers made the most of the holiday. There was never any thing of the martinet about the Duke. He was not the man to harass with unnecessary and vexations drills, or rigidly to enforce unimportant rules. Those persons, whether military or otherwise, who consider a strictly regulation uniform as essential to the composition ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... 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 speak of him ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... 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
... service has come to when midshipmen take such liberties with their superiors, eh, Captain Sourcrout?" he exclaimed, giving a poke in the ribs with his elbow to a stiff, old, martinet style of post-captain, who sat next to him, and had looked utterly ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Thomas 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 ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... neck, said, "You wish to see Mademoiselle Le Marchant?" And then I noticed that the little ormer shell curls about this little lady's face were not all gray, but mixed gray and brown, and that this little face was, if anything, still more frigidly ungracious than the last, a regular little martinet of a face, and I knew that it must be another ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... 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
... he does not ride better he will disgrace the regiment," said Captain Rivalhate, who was very good-looking; "if he does not ride better, we will cut him!" said Colonel Everdrill, who was a wonderful martinet; "I say, Mr. Bumpemwell (to the riding-master,) make that youngster ride less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 340, Supplementary Number (1828) • Various
... the household gods. Civilization to be is on the move. Gold draws these crowds. The gulfs of the Carribean, even the lonely straits of Magellan and the far Pacific, are furrowed now by keels seeking the happy land where plentiful gold awaits every daring adventurer. Martinet military governors cannot control this embryo empire. Already in Congress bills are introduced to admit California into the Union. A rising golden star glitters in the West; it is soon to gild the flag of the Union ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 other. A whole crop of suggestions made by the Captain on the improvement of the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... outrage such as this, let a fine-built fellow, such as you are, George (and the women should show wisdom in their choice of champions), let a man, and a queen's officer as you are, treat this brute, Julian Tracy, as a martinet huntsman would a hound thrown out. As for me, boy, I'm going to call on Mrs. Tracy at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning—and, without presuming to advise a six foot two of a son, I think—I think, if I were you, I would be dutiful enough to say—'Father, I will ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... should make full compensation, and hence can cheerfully submit to the law compelling me to do so; but if the law undertakes to exempt any other person from a similar liability, I feel a keen sense of wrong. Conversely, the most strict disciplinarian, the martinet even, if otherwise competent receives ready obedience and respect if it is seen that he treats alike, according to their merits, all subject to his authority. This feeling is natural. Nature is impartial in ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... 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 been sent to boarding-school. ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... 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 its descent ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... exemplifies and typifies this quality of serenity is never less than dignified but, withal, is never either cold or rigid. Children nestle about her in their affections and expand in her presence as flowers open in the sunshine. She cannot be a martinet nor, in her presence, can the children become sycophants. Her very presence generates an atmosphere that is conducive to healthy growth. There is that impelling force about her that draws people to her as iron filings are drawn ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson |
