feruling

"This was to be the old-fashioned 'feruling' of the hand.

Lincoln's Yarns and Stories: a complete collection of the funny and witty anecdotes that made Lincoln famous as America's greatest story teller 1868

His crowning act was feruling a little boy, as ingenuous and innocent-hearted a child as ever breathed, on the tops of his finger-nails -- a refinement of cruelty beyond all previous example.

Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 Various

To be sure, somebody who ought to know, told me it was the lightest ` ` feruling '' ever child received; but Daisy and Tommy both assured their mothers that it was the ` ` dreadfulest, cruelest, hardest whipping ever was. ''

Twilight stories 1905

For another full minute he stared down at the girl, but he apparently had no longer any thought of feruling her.

A Busy Year at the Old Squire's 1887

Schoolmaster Grimshaw's invitation, on the platform in the recitation - room of the Temple Grammar School -- sitting on the very platform with the green baize-covered table to which he had many a time marched up sideways to take a feruling.

The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1871

"You look as if Master Purple had been feruling you."

Little Grandmother Sophie May 1869