"Extortionate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... passed the numerous villages, and perceived the entire face of the land to be one vast field of grain, and counted the people halted by scores on the roadside to feast their eyes with a greedy stare on the Musungu, I no longer wondered at the extortionate demands of the Wagogo. For it was manifest that they had but to stretch out their hands to possess whatever the wealth of a caravan consisted of; and I began to think better of the people who, knowing well their strength, did not use it—of people who were intellectual enough to comprehend ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... service. The collection of taxes was enforced by suits at law, with enormous expense; and executions, levies, and distresses were of every-day occurrence. All sums exceeding forty shillings were sued for and executions obtained in the courts, the original debt being saddled with extortionate bills of cost. Sheriffs demanded more than was due, under threats of sheriff's sales; and they applied the gains thus made to their own use. Money, as is always the case in a new country, was exceedingly scarce, and the sufferings of the ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... her husband was in funds, he patted her head affectionately, and told her that he would see about it—i.e. the payment of Mrs. Kepp's bill; while, if she ventured to mention the subject to him when his purse was scantily furnished, he would ask her fiercely how he was to satisfy her mother's extortionate claims when he had not so much as a ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... never really happened. The amount of violence was perhaps as great elsewhere. It is hard to say for certain, whether in the year 1500 men were any safer, whether human life was any better protected, in powerful, wealthy Germany, with its robber knights, extortionate beggars, and daring highwaymen. But one thing is certain, that premeditated crimes, committed professionally and for hire by third parties, occurred in Italy with great ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Chinese, however, are not fond of travelling; they love their homes too well, and they further dread the inconveniences and dangers attached to travel in many other parts of the world. Boatmen, carters, and innkeepers have all of them bad reputations for extortionate charges; and the traveller may sometimes happen upon a "black inn," which is another name for a den of thieves. Still there have been many who travelled for the sake of beautiful scenery, or in order to visit famous spots of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... in which he had earned it, were slightly mixed, it must be acknowledged. But, though he knew very well that he had been influenced only by the consideration of his own interest, he had a vague idea that he was entitled to some credit for his kindness in consenting to sell his neighbor a cow at an extortionate price. ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... were charged fifteen francs, or three francs each, while at the best hotels in Paris, and in all the cities through which we passed, we had double the quantity of fare, and of the best kind, for two francs and sometimes for one and one half francs. All parleying with the extortionate landlord had only the effect of making him more positive and even insolent; and when we at last threw him the money to avoid further detention, he told us to mark his house, and, with the face of a ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... unintentionally comic features of absurd colonial laws and punishments in which the early legal records so delightfully abound, that the first man who was sentenced to and occupied the stocks in Boston was the carpenter who made them. He was thus fitly punished for his extortionate charge to the town for the lumber he used in their manufacture. This was rather better than "making the punishment fit the crime," since the Boston magistrates managed to force the criminal to furnish his own punishment. In Shrewsbury, also, the unhappy man who first tested the wearisome ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... States the mineral fuels have already passed into the hands of large private owners, and those of the West are rapidly following. It is obvious that these fuels should be conserved and not wasted, and it would be well to protect the people against unjust and extortionate prices, so far as that can still be done. What has been accomplished in the great oil fields of the Indian Territory by the action of the Administration, offers a striking example of the good results of such a policy. In my judgment the Government should have the right ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... separated from the squadron, had arrived safely at Rio Janeiro. Of the sad fate of the Wager, and the loss of the larger number of her officers and crew, he did not receive intelligence till his return home. He was annoyed by the extortionate demands made by the Chinese carpenters for the necessary repairs of the ship, while he had considerable difficulty at times, in consequence of the behaviour of the ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... the latter, changes were too frequent, and a governor might sometimes strain a point to enrich himself quickly. But it must on no account be imagined that at this date a governor could with impunity be extortionate or oppress the provincials, as he too often did in the good old days of the republic. He was paid his salary, which might be anything up to L10,000; his allowances and power of making requisitions, such as of salt, wood, and hay when travelling, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... captain was to receive the sum of 97,740 francs within ten days of their arrival at Rio. By the acceptance of these truly extortionate conditions a bargain, which had cost much ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... we settled it. I paid him an extortionate sum, and came away with a duplicate poodle, a canine counterfeit, which I hoped to pass off at Shuturgarden as ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... adrift. The Baas had exacted from him the services of himself, his wife and his oxen, for wages of 30s. a month, whereas Kgobadi had been making over 100 Pounds a year, besides retaining the services of his wife and of his cattle for himself. When he refused the extortionate terms the Baas retaliated with a Dutch note, dated the 30th day of June, 1913, which ordered him to "betake himself from the farm of the undersigned, by sunset of the same day, failing which his stock would be seized and impounded, and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... to the celebrated Hotel Delmonte, at Monterey, the show place of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which, by its extortionate transportation charges, has ruined many struggling fruit raisers in this state where ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... left with untainted principles. The last,—in all respects the best and airiest of the three, standing, as has been before observed, in Phoenix Court, at the rear of the main fabric,—was reserved for state-offenders, and such persons as chose to submit to the extortionate demands of the keeper: from twenty to five hundred pounds premium, according to the rank and means of the applicant, in addition to a high weekly rent, being required for accommodation in this quarter. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Kursaal is everything, and the town nothing. The extortionate hotel-keepers, the "snub-nosed rogues of counter and till," who overcharge you in the shops, make their egregious profits from the Kursaal. The major part of the Landgrave's revenue is derived from the Kursaal; he draws ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... was intended for speculative purposes. Thus, there were instances in which a line occupying a given territory had antagonized its patrons by poor service, and extortionate charges. Thereupon another company would obtain a charter—which was then easily done—and build a competing line in the same territory, the former most likely having scarcely enough business for one road.[18] The results were ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... extraordinary success upon her provincial tours; enormous profits resulted from her repeated visits to Holland and Belgium, Germany, Russia, and England. But, from first to last, Rachel's connection with the Francais was an incessant quarrel. She was capricious, ungrateful, unscrupulous, extortionate. She struggled to evade her duties, to do as little as she possibly could in return for the large sums she received from the committee. She pretended to be too ill to play in Paris, the while she was always well ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... desired, within the city of London, or seven miles round." The poor folk carried their prescriptions to the apothecaries, to learn that the trade charge for dispensing them was beyond their means. The physicians asserted that the demands of the drug-vendors were extortionate, and were not reduced to meet the finances of the applicants, to the end that the undertakings of benevolence might prove abortive. This was, of course, absurd. The apothecaries knew their own interests better than to ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... have been limited to about L8000 a month.[107] Out of this he offered a part to Cicero as the Proconsul who was immediately over him. This Cicero declined, but pressed the king to pay the money to the extortionate Brutus, who was a creditor, and who endeavored to get this money through Cicero. But Pompey also was a creditor, and Pompey's name was more dreadful to the king than that of Brutus. Pompey, therefore, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... peasants in England were now free from serfdom. Under Henry VI. occurred a formidable insurrection of the men of Kent, who marched to London led by John Cade, who called himself John Mortimer. They complained of bad government and extortionate taxes. One main cause of the rising was the successes of the French. The condition of the laboring class had much improved. The insurgents were defeated by the citizens, and their leader was slain. In this reign began the long "Wars ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... number of unfortunate individuals whom her and her husband's intrigues have caused to suffer capitally during 1800 and 1801 was forty-six; and that nearly three hundred persons besides, who could not or would not pay their extortionate demands, were exiled to Siberia during the same period ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... proposed new works. He set before them plans and details of pleasant cottages he meant to build for them, with good gardens, and scores of conveniences which they could never know in the dingy, grimy tenements for which they paid extortionate rents in London. ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... before I took any steps in the matter, I made it a point of duty to deprive the infamous attorney, Perkins, of his means of power over the unhappy family. I determined to pay his legal charges; and William Edgerton, at my request, readily undertook this part of the business. They were found to be extortionate, and far beyond anything either warranted by the practice or the fee bill. Edgerton counselled me to resist the claim; but the subject was too delicate in all its relations, and my own affair with Perkins would have made my active opposition seem somewhat the consequence ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... trophy by the Persians, there were other very powerful causes. For many years the taxation imposed by the Emperors of Constantinople on their subjects in Asia and Africa had been not only excessive and extortionate, but likewise complicated. This the khalifs replaced by a simple well-defined tribute of far less amount. Thus, in the case of Cyprus, the sum paid to the khalif was only half of what it had been to the emperor; and, indeed, the lower orders were never made to feel the bitterness ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... extortion of the Sultan and Datos, or native chiefs, who, on the least occasion, or pretext for it, capture and enslave or confine them, only allowing these unfortunates to regain their very unstable liberty by presents or extortionate bribes. ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... preparation for emergencies. The ordinary magistrates pillage the treasury, are oppressive, indolent, and corrupt, and take advantage of their position to traffic; they are not sharply looked after. The encomenderos are extortionate and fraudulent, take law into their own hands, and fail to provide religious instruction for the Indians. The royal exchequer and treasury is negligently and wastefully managed, and insufficiently regulated. There are many sinecures, and not a little fraud in offices. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... themselves and are selecting that enterprise which will serve them most effectively. In going into these businesses where profits are greatest they are not only prospering themselves but they are performing one of their most legitimate functions, that of protecting the consumer from extortionate profits. ...
— Consumers' Cooperative Societies in New York State • The Consumers' League of New York
... Illinois law of 1873; but it soon discovered that no workable set of uniform rates could be made for the State because of the wide variation of conditions in the different sections. Rates and fares which would be just to the companies in the frontier regions of the State would be extortionate in the thickly populated areas. This difficulty could have been avoided by giving the commission power to establish varying schedules for different sections of the same road; but the anti-railroad sentiment was beginning to die down, and the Legislature of 1875, instead ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... The ranches had been seized in the tentacles of the octopus; the iniquitous burden of extortionate freight rates had been imposed like a yoke of iron. The monster had killed Harran, had killed Osterman, had killed Broderson, had killed Hooven. It had beggared Magnus and had driven him to a state of semi-insanity ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... qualities we often see in selfish men—a sort of legal and technical regard to the letter of the law, with the constant violation of its spirit. A Shylock might not enter a false charge upon his books, while he would adhere to a most extortionate bargain. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... between these two races of Jews in discussing the question of Jewish emancipation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim had shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecutions, the Ashkenazim by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themselves detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain their rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on the subject of the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews of Alsace. Already, in 1784, the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... consider what Ireland owed to her railways, which, perhaps, all things considered, was the best conducted business in the country. It, however, became the vogue to decry Irish lines as inefficient and extortionate, and a fashion once started, however ridiculous, never lacks supporters. The public, like sheep, are easily led. In England the average return on capital expended was 4 pounds 0s. 5d., and in ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... "a gallant sailor," according to Kingsley's poem—a Robin Hood of the waters, who preys only on the wicked rich, or the cruel and Popish Spaniard, and the extortionate shipowner. For his own part, when he is not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives mainly "for climate and ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... noted, for the benefit of those who may conceive that the above statement is unfair to the railway companies, that no charge is here made that the prices fixed by the companies for the coal are at the present time extortionate or unjust. That is a separate matter; in which, doubtless, there would be plenty to affirm on the one hand that the prices charged were no more than a just compensation, while their opponents would declare that the prices adopted by the pool favor some points to the prejudice ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... taken by means of extortionate taxation from the rich, whole sections of the population are to be bribed into supporting Socialism. "Two objectionable heads of revenue would find no place in a Socialist national balance-sheet—the profit from the Post Office and ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... nasty, at any rate it was cheap; they charged us a franc a piece for our suppers, beds, and two cigars; we went to the inn to breakfast, where, though the accommodation was somewhat better, the charge was most extortionate. Murray is quite right in saying the travellers should bargain beforehand at this inn (chez Richard); I think they charged us five francs for the most ordinary breakfast. From this place we started at about nine, and took a guide as far as the top of the Col de la Croix Haute, having ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... neither stout nor thin, with vulgar good looks, a face that expressed vexation rather than melancholy, and a pensive habit in which there was more of indecision than thought. People called him a misanthrope, but he was too eager after his own interests, and too extortionate towards others to have set up a genuine divorce from the world. His indifferent demeanor, his affected silence, his habitual custom of looking, as it were, into the void, seemed to indicate depth of character, while in fact they merely concealed ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac
... of this avaricious, extortionate and cruel statesman, that "the dark shades of his character were not relieved by a single virtue." His advent disturbed the public tranquillity. He plundered the people, cheated the proprietors, and on all occasions seems to have prostituted his delegated ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... imperfectly guaranteed to him by the laws of charity; laws which, however, year by year became of greater power. He afterwards became colon, or labourer (Figs. 13 and 14), working for himself under certain conditions and tenures, paying fines, or services, which, it is true, were often very extortionate. At this time he was considered to belong to the domain on which he was born, and he was at least sure that that soil would not be taken from him, and that in giving part of his time to his master, he was at liberty ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... might be vested in the government, the farmer would have a title to the use of the farm which no one could dispute or take from him. If he had to borrow money he would do it from the government and would not be charged extortionate rates of interest as he is now. He would not have to pay railroad companies' profits, since the railways being owned by all for all and not run for profit, would be operated upon a basis of the cost ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... doge, Henry Dandolo, then more than ninety years old. When ambassador at the Byzantine court (1173) he was blinded by order of the emperor Manuel I, and revenge was probably one of the motives which took him again to the East. The Venetians, being asked to transport the crusaders, demanded an extortionate price; but as Venice was the only power possessing the necessary ships, a contract was made with her for the service in 1201. Immediately the Venetians, by a secret treaty with Egypt, for the sake of commercial privileges, betrayed the crusaders to the Moslems. Embarkation from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... renewed with vigour; whether from the laudable desire of reforming abuses, or with the object of terrorising the Church into complete subservience. Incidentally it is to be observed that so far as the activity of the Commons was directed against the payment of extortionate fees, the Church had a part only, not the whole, of their opposition. They logically and manfully resisted a "Bill of Wards" legalising claims of the Lords in sundry cases of the marriage of wards. This has been jibed at [Footnote: Moore (Aubrey), Hist. of the Reformation, 103.] ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... ahead once more to pull up at a small station. Here there was a mad scramble for supplies and the refreshment room was soon cleared out of its small stock. On the platform an extortionate German drove a brisk trade selling small bottles of lemonade at sixpence a bottle. More excitement was caused by a newsvendor mounting a box and holding aloft a single copy of the latest newspaper which he would sell to the ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... for the space of about a year; but I always managed to be the gainer by his course. Now, however, when new difficulties threatened, all the leading managers in New York were members of the 'Managers' Association,' and as we all submitted to the arbitrary and extortionate demands of the Herald, Bennett thought he had but to crack his whip, in order to keep all and any of us within the traces. Accordingly one day Bennett's attorney wrote me a letter, saying that he would like to have me ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... to pay Paul, and stripping the niggard that he might indulge his fervent love of generosity. Of all usurers and bailiffs he had a wholesome horror, and merry was the prank which he played upon the extortionate money-lender of Warwick. Riding on an easy rein through the town, Hind heard a tumult at a street corner, and inquiring the cause, was told that an innkeeper was arrested by a thievish usurer for a paltry twenty pounds. Dismounting, this providence ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... exercise of all the remedies allowed by law." In August, 1862, the Governor of Florida wrote to the Florida delegation at Richmond urging them to take steps to meet the "nefarious smuggling" of speculators who charged extortionate prices. In September, he wrote again begging for legislation to compel millers, tanners, and saltmakers to offer their products at reasonable rates. As these men were exempt from military duty because their labor was held to be a public service, feeling ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... peaceful and fatherly judges of old time, for a sign to the poor souls round Him, who had no lawgivers but the proud and fierce Scribes and Pharisees, no king but the cruel and godless Caesar, and his oppressive and extortionate officers and troops. Meek and lowly He came; and for once the people saw that He was the true Son of David—a man and king, like him, after God's own heart. For once they felt that He had come in the name of the Lord the ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... latter opinion; and at last we all rose, and paying the landlord's somewhat extortionate demand with the best grace we could, considering the hole it made in our pocket, went out to inspect our beasts. They were tolerably strong animals, and two or three looked as if they had some go in them, at ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... thrown about their money in a way which has inaugurated an era of reckless lavishness comparable only to the California days of "forty-nine.'' In the port cities of China, the porters asked me extortionate prices because I was an American. Two or three coolies would seize a suit case or change it from man to man every few minutes, on the pretense that it was heavy. In Tien-tsin, you hire a jinrikisha and presently you ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... that in the transfer the beneficent intention of the Government to supply from its domain homes to the industrious and worthy home seekers is often frustrated. Though the speculator, who stands with extortionate purpose between the land office and those who, with their families, are invited by the Government to settle on the public lands, is a despicable character who ought not to be tolerated, yet it is difficult to thwart his schemes. The recent opening to settlement of the lands in the Cherokee ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... spite of his preliminary assent, proved extortionate to George in this matter; and exacted heavy sums for the actual possession of Oppeln and Ratibor. George, going so zealously ahead in Protestant affairs, grew less and less a favorite with Kaisers. But so, at any rate, on peaceable unquestionable grounds, grounds valid ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... the goods were sound and sold at fair rates. The next day prices were up, and the standards fixed behind the front soon ruled at the line itself. There was no real control attempted, and while the extortionate prices charged by Jews in their excellent agricultural colonies and by the natives made a poor people prosperous, it gave them an exaggerated idea of the size of the British purse, and they may be disappointed at the limitation of our spending powers in the future. Also it was hard on the bravest ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... such paltry devices. The true artist draws from the imagination. Let any man think for a moment what manner of man he is. Is he not at once struck with the fact that he is not as other men are—that he is not extortionate, nor unjust, and so forth? But, in truth, if I were to paint my own portrait, I know there are fifty fools who would think I meant it for themselves; and as I cannot tolerate vanity in other people, I will say no more ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... command the Channel Fleet, or set a leg at twenty minutes' notice, and yet you hesitate over asking to escape from a squashy green district where you admit you are not master. Drop the Bengal Government altogether. Even Darjiling is a little out-of-the-way hole. I was there once, and the rents were extortionate. Assert yourself. Get the Government of India to take you over. Try to get on the Frontier, where every man has a grand chance if he can trust himself. Go somewhere! Do something! You have twice the wits and three ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... tried to sell me an ill-tempered brute, blind of one eye, for an extortionate price. ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... "Salaam aleikoom, ya Sidi!" from the jolly old Tripolitan landlord. There was an unusual amount of travel northward on the following day, and we were detained at every station, so that it was nearly midnight before we reached the extortionate inn at Gefle. The morning dawned with a snow-storm, but we were within 120 miles of Stockholm, and drove in the teeth of it to Elfkarleby. The renowned cascades of the Dal were by no means what I expected, but it was at least a satisfaction ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... authority to suppress all printing-presses and to encourage Episcopacy. In the latter interest he opened King's Chapel to the Prayer Book. His permission was required for any one to leave the colony. Extortionate fees and taxes were imposed. Puritans had to swear on the Bible, which they regarded wicked, or be disfranchised. Personal and proprietary rights were summarily set at naught, and all deeds to land were declared void till renewed—for money, of course. The citizens ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Roman power, the colonial dependencies of this great empire were more and more allowed to fall into the almost absolute control of unscrupulous governors, who did not miss an occasion to levy extortionate taxes and manage everything in their own interests. As the natural result of the raids of the barbarian hordes—the Alans, the Suevians, the Vandals, and the Goths—Spain was losing all that semblance of national unity ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... about it he found that the opposition he would generate would be something much more than local. Back of the local reduction idea was the whole system of extortionate gas rates of the State and of the nation; hundreds of fat, luxurious gas corporations whose dividends would be threatened by ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... demanded thought, and for a time he sat motionless, deeply pondering. His farming had prospered, though the bare and laborious life had tried him hard, and he had made some money by more questionable means, lending to unfortunate neighbours at extortionate interest and foreclosing on their possessions. No defaulter got any mercy at his hands and shrewd sellers of seed and implements took precautions when they ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... Y.: A case brought up in court here today shows to what extent the extortionate loan sharks will go in their greed for money. It was proved that two years ago O. U. Curr loaned Mrs. Kate Poor, a washer-woman with three small children, the sum of fifty dollars on household furniture. A contract was entered into, whereby the widow ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... Cheating, doubtfully attributed to Robert Greene (1560-1592), we find that gamesters call themselves cheaters, "borrowing the term from the lawyers." The sense development is obscure, but it would seem to be due to the extortionate or fraudulent demands ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... soldier in Ireland. The daughter of the house was pretty and passably clean, but it was very grimly that she had led me through an immense gaudy drawing-room disconsolate in dust wrappings, to a little room where we could wash. She gave us an exiguous meal at an extortionate charge, and refused to put more than two of us up; so, on the advice of two gallivanting lancers who had escaped from the Curragh for some supper, we called in the aid of the police, and were billeted magnificently ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... silent, and we went on. "There is something very droll in all that. We suppose you have often been vexed, or even outraged, by the ingratitude of the waiter whom you had given a handsome tip, over and above the extortionate charge of the house, and who gathered up your quarter or half-dollar and slipped it into his pocket without a word, or even an inarticulate ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... because he was my son, and my daughter, my sweet Dolores—well, she is dead also, I pray the Mother of Mercies. Truly I have suffered very much, yet there be others, alas! I might tell you of our goodly towns burned or held to extortionate ransom, of our women ravished, our children butchered, our men tormented, our defenceless merchant ships destroyed and their crews with them, but my list is long, young sir, and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... traders first, and then came to me with two cocks as a present. I spoke to him about the impolicy of treatment we had received at his hands, and quoted the example of the Bangalas, who had been conquered by the Portuguese, for their extortionate demands of payment for firewood, grass, water, etc., and concluded by denying his right to any payment for simply passing through uncultivated land. To all this he agreed; and then I gave him, as a token of friendship, a pannikin of coarse powder, two iron spoons, and two yards ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... legal jurisdiction by the Rector of the university in cases affecting scholars, payment of professors' salaries by the city, exemption from taxes, loans to scholars at a low rate of interest, and guarantees against extortionate prices for food and ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... as news is concerned, but it was not to be so. The charges for telegraph news were so excessive that the three papers in St. Paul could not afford the luxury of the "latest news by Associated Press." The offices combined against the extortionate rates demanded by the telegraph company and made an agreement not to take the dispatches until the rates were lowered; but it was like an agreement of the railroad presidents of the present day, it was not adhered to. The Pioneer made a secret contract with the telegraph ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... extortion. Remarked so to the Dean, who replied (nastily, I think), "Oh, it's for the interest of the Church not to have paupers for Prelates." I retorted at once, rather ably, that "I could not conceive a better plan for bringing Prelates to pauperism than the exaction of extortionate fees at Installation." Dean replied, sneeringly, "Oh, if you don't value the honour, I suppose there's still time for you to resign." Resign, yes; but should I get back my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... I was not opposing any protection of the struggling industries of the country, or of the sugar growers, but I was set against the extortionate differential that the sugar trust was demanding. Everybody knew that the trust had built its tremendous industrial power upon such criminally high protection as this differential afforded, and that its power now affected public ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... I stayed among the hills the more I became convinced that the people had strained every nerve to pay what they considered unjust and extortionate rents. They worked hard; they farmed hard; they wore poor clothing; they left their hill and went over to Scotland or England, at harvest time, to earn money to pay the rent. "And we were not considered ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... general servant getting from L10 to L12, and a good plain cook from L15 upwards. These are servants who would get from L22 to L30 in England, and more in America. But the wages of German servants are supplemented at Christmas by a system of tips and presents that has in course of time become extortionate. Germans groan under it, but every nation knows how hard it is to depart from one of these traditional indefinite customs. The system is hateful, because it is neither one of free gift nor of business-like payment, but hovers somewhere between and gives rise to much ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... ST. JOHN, writing in 1856, gives, in his "Life in the Forests of the Far East," several instances of the grievous oppression practiced on the Limbang people. Amongst others he mentions how a native, in a fit of desperation, had killed an extortionate tax-gatherer. Instead of having the offender arrested and punished, the Sultan ordered his village to be attacked, when fifty persons were killed and an equal number of women and children were made prisoners and kept as slaves by His Highness. The immediate cause of the rebellion to which I ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... from me," rejoined the hostess. "I should have been reduced to beggary had I submitted to their extortionate usage. I bore it as long as I could, but when absolute ruin stared me in the face, I had recourse to a noble friend who helped me in my extremity and delivered ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... like as not draw his hands down his face passionately. As to myself, he was not pointedly impertinent: it was rather as though he could not be bothered with such trifles as my existence; and the truth is that being a monopolist he was under no necessity to be amiable. He was sure to get his own extortionate terms out of me for towage whether he frowned or smiled. As a matter of fact, he did neither: but before many days elapsed he managed to astonish me not a little and to set Schomberg's tongue clacking ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... average price of labor for seamstresses to be from 31 to 38 cents a day, and board from $1.25 to $1.50 per week to be deducted therefrom, and they were generally obliged to take half or more in due bills, which were payable in goods at certain stores, thereby obliging them many times to pay extortionate prices. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... One extortionate Irish custom, called "coigny," they specially affected, of which it was said "that though it were first invented in hell, yet if it had been used and practised there as it hath been in Ireland, it had long since destroyed ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... strangers draw away the flock, for if you slumber in your slothfulness and disdainful pride, or worse still, in covetousness, they will come from all sides and draw away your flock. Expound the Gospel to the people unceasingly ... be not extortionate.... Do not love gold and silver, do not hoard them.... Have faith. Cling to the banner ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... company cracking jokes among themselves, drinking brandy and soda at extortionate prices, and staring hard at Lady Bridget. Colin pointed out to her a lucky digger and his family—two daughters in blue serge trimmed with gold braid, and a fat red-faced Mamma, very fine in a feathered hat, black brocade, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... often a source of annoyance, and become extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor. It seems to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority. I do not scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons, writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the courts of justice, in the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Government, through its representative here, and directly in communication with our representative at Colombia, has refused to come to any agreement with us, and has delayed action so as to make it evident that it intends to make extortionate and improper terms with us. The Isthmian Canal bill was, of course, passed upon the assumption that whatever route was used, the benefit to the particular section of the Isthmus through which it passed would be so great that the country ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... out the fact that the United States had already paid the Bey heavy tribute, and asked when these extortionate demands ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... accumulated agony of this part of the trial I began to fear that my mind might give way. I was conscious of occasional fury of temper under very slight provocation. An expressman had charged me what was really an extortionate sum for bringing out a carriage from the city. I can laugh now over the absurd way in which I attacked him, not so much I am sure to save the overcharge as to get rid on so legitimate an object of my accumulated irritability. After nearly an hour's angry dispute, ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... made it clear, first, that the stores were to be sold at a commercial value, and, second, that he would protect the taxpayer against extortionate claims on the part of contractors. As regards this second difficulty, pressure was brought against him from the very highest political quarters to admit certain claims and to avoid legal action. His reply was, "I will resign before ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... uncultured but free spirited men of the back country. Events were slowly converging toward a crisis in government and society. Independent in spirit, turbulent in action, the backwoodsmen revolted not only against excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and extortionate fees, but also against the rapacious practices of the agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously picked flaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon which the poorer settlers were ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... it, Harry" (no doubt she thought she was), "you will keep up the old name, while my scrupulous lord and master gives up my poor patrimony to the extortionate creditors for years to come. It is well that the young lovers have other prospects. So Harry, you see after all, I kept my word, and your daughter is provided for," she continued with an arch smile. "Pretty creature, I find my son bears me more malice ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... details, and completed an officious little conspiracy; and the upshot of it was that Mrs. Mack, whenever M. M. fixed a day for her next extortionate visit, was to apprise the doctor, who was to keep in the way; and, when she arrived, the good lady was just to send across to him for some 'peppermint drops,' upon which hint Toole himself would come slily ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... (1) torture, tortoise, retort, contort, distortion, extortionate, torch, (apple) tart, truss, nasturtium; (2) tort, tortuous, torsion, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... austere, hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron-handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c (ruthless) 914.1; cruel &c (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c 885; precisian^. Adv. severely &c adj.; with a high hand, with a strong hand, with a tight hand, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... man whose name was potent enough to summon an army adequate for so perilous a situation; and that man was Albrecht von Wallenstein. He was himself, too, fully aware of his preciousness and the terms which he exacted of Ferdinand were hard, not to say extortionate. Ferdinand II., however, had no choice but to accept them. It was not long before Gustavus became aware that Wallenstein, with an army which seemed to have risen out of the ground, was moving in his rear, resolved, apparently, to cut him off from his communication with Sweden. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... scheme of fortune-telling by cards, as propounded in the learned disquisitions of the adepts, and Betty, or Martha, or her mistress can consult them by themselves according to the established method—without exposing themselves to the extortionate cunning of the wandering gipsies or the permanent crone of the city or village. They may just as well believe what comes out according to their own manipulation as by that of the heartless cheats in question. Your ordinary fortune-tellers are ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... here and by what right we carried them down from the attic, we can honestly say that Abner said we could go over the house and see if there was anything we liked to buy," said Polly, with a collector's instinct for not paying extortionate prices for what ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I discerned it was all owing to our own inexperience, and put an end to the contention, by telling the man to take us to Norfolk Street in the Strand, which was the direction we had got. But when we got to the door, the coachman was so extortionate, that another hobbleshaw arose. Mrs. Pringle had been told that, in such disputes, the best way of getting redress was to take the number of the coach; but, in trying to do so, we found it fastened ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... army to be so urgent, and its present attitude and temper so perilous to their existence, that they desired to turn the thoughts of the troops to objects which might divert their attention from making extortionate demands for higher pay, by employing their energies in hostile operations against ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... the price of even second-class travelling in Italy is over half a cent a mile higher than that of the splendid trains in America, with their swift time, their smooth roadbeds, their admirable conveniences in every way. Again, no luggage is carried free, and the prices asked for it are extortionate beyond words. One may check all his impedimenta from San Francisco to New York without extra charge; but in going from Rome to Naples, or from Florence to Genoa to sail, the same luggage will cost from six to eight ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... imagined, might be turned to good account; but the matter demanded thought, and for a long time he sat motionless, deeply pondering. His farming had prospered, though the bare and laborious life had tried him hard; and he had made some money by more questionable means, lending to unfortunate neighbors at extortionate interest and foreclosing on their possessions. No defaulter got any mercy at his hands, and shrewd sellers of seed and implements took precautions when ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... the contingencies of this species of trade, since it enables the dealer to offer his uncalled-for wares in the least suspicious and most natural manner. It was fortunate, also, that I lay at the bottom of the little pile—a climax being quite as essential in sustaining an extortionate price, as in terminating with due effect, a poem, a tragedy, ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... or not is a problem. Under these circumstances it is difficult to say what is to become, financially, of the people of Cuba. Sugar is their great staple, but all business has been equally depressed upon the island, under the bane of civil wars, extortionate taxation, and oppressive rule. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... holdings has in many cases been, not sternly forbidden on pain of eviction, but made the occasion of inflicting a fine. This shabby and extortionate kind of protest against subdivision has long obtained on certain estates. If one may believe evidence given on oath in a court of justice, as reported in a local newspaper, there was within the last twenty years on at least one estate a custom of exacting a fine from ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... hard-headed, hard-nosed, hard-shell [U.S.], relentless, Spartan, Draconian, stringent, strait-laced, searching, unsparing, iron- handed, peremptory, absolute, positive, arbitrary, imperative; coercive &c. 744; tyrannical, extortionate, grinding, withering, oppressive, inquisitorial; inclement &c. (ruthless) 914a; cruel &c. (malevolent) 907; haughty, arrogant &c. 885; precisian[obs3]. Adv. severely &c. adj.; with a high hand, with a strong ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... which their cause must necessarily sustain from the want of his support. The Duke, however, firmly withstood all their expostulations; wearied and disgusted by the inefficiency of his endeavours to protect the interests of the sovereign against the encroachments of extortionate nobles, and the machinations of interested ministers, he felt no inclination to afford a new triumph to his enemies by awaiting a formal dismissal; and he accordingly took the necessary measures for disposing of his superintendence of the finances, and his government of the Bastille ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... still stood in the way of a permanent alliance of friendship with us, and it was mainly the majority of the el-moran who wanted to treat us as strangers passing through Masailand were generally treated—that is, to exhibit towards us a violent, arrogant, and extortionate demeanour. They refused to believe in our great power, since we had not killed even one Masai warrior, but had sent home in good condition all who had fought against us, except sixteen—who had, however, been killed by the Wa-Duruma and ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... they maintain for the royal service shall be left to their disposal, or credited on the next year's assessment. Another decree, dated November 19, recites the oppression of the Chinese in the Parian in compelling their hair to be cut at baptism, and levying from them an extortionate tribute; and orders that both these vexations ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various
... want to go to Bordeaux, and are willing to help load my boat, and to carry the barrels to the warehouse at Bordeaux, in return for a passage. Well, I agree to the bargain. The warehouse is not very far from the wharf, but the men there charge an extortionate price." ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... a man.—The habit of looking solely to one's own interest deadens the social sympathies, dwarfs the generous affections, weakens self-respect, until at length the dishonest men can rob the widow of her livelihood; take an exorbitant commission on the labor of the orphan; charge an extortionate rent to a family of helpless invalids; sell worthless stocks to an aged couple in exchange for the hard earnings of a life-time, and still endure to live. Dishonesty makes men inhuman. The love of gain is a species of moral and spiritual ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... Winder has issued an order fixing the maximum prices of certain articles of marketing, which has only the effect of keeping a great many things out of market. The farmers have to pay the merchants and Jews their extortionate prices, and complain very justly of the partiality of the general. It does ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... adaptation of the Arabic al-wazir, the minister and used in Spanish both for a justiciary and a bailiff." Here it implies cruel and extortionate treatment. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... post sutler who desired to keep on the right side of those in authority. Why, then, could not the Secretary of War permit his wife to receive a douceur from one of those cormorants, who always grow rich, and who may without harm be made to lay down a fraction of their extortionate gains? ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... c. 45, 46, p. 230—232. His economy is there said to have degenerated into parsimony. He is accused of having taken away the levying of taxes and payment of the troops from the municipal authorities, (the decurionate) in the Eastern cities, and intrusted it to an extortionate officer named Mannus. But he admits that the imperial revenue was enormously increased by this measure. A statue of iron had been erected to Anastasius in the Hippodrome, on which appeared one morning this pasquinade. This epigram is also found in the Anthology. Jacobs, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... conquest of Salamis, Solon increased his reputation by espousing the cause of the Delphian temple against the extortionate proceedings of the inhabitants of Cirrha, and the favor of the oracle was probably not without its effect in procuring for him that encouraging prophecy with which his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... for throughout Christendom there is neither knight nor man of high estate worthy to be compared with you. My advice is, never yield to the Romans. When they reigned over us, they oppressed our principal men, and laid heavy and extortionate burdens upon the land. For that cause I, standing here, solemnly vow vengeance upon them for the evil they then did, and, to support you in your quarrel, I will at my own cost furnish twenty thousand good fighting men. This ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... happy, and they send loves to you by the bushel. We are in the agonies of house-hunting. The people are frightfully civil, and grotesquely extortionate. One man (with a house to let) told me yesterday that he loved the Duke of Wellington like a brother. The same gentleman wanted to hug me round the neck with one hand, and pick my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... to educate the masses in regard to housing, and payment of exorbitant rents was discouraged. The various city departments were asked to enforce ordinances in negro neighborhoods. In this way the league tried to reduce overcrowding and extortionate rentals. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... condiments of salt, vinegar, and red pepper. Should you be a bon vivant you will ask for onion and a few bean sprouts, though this entail the reckless expenditure of the further sum of one penny. You lodge a protest at such extortionate charges, for, as your servant remarks, "at such a price we cannot afford to eat." Two sticks cut from a tree serve for table cutlery. "I hate luxury," said Goethe, "it kills the imagination." Here imagination flourishes. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... adopted, by which the currency dollar could have ever approximated to coin, it would have been simply impossible for the holders of supplies to have run prices up to extortionate figures. Not that I would for one instant excuse, or ask any mercy for, those unclean vultures who preyed upon the dead credit of their Government; who grew fat and loathsome while they battened on the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... wealthy and strenuously opposed to progress and liberty, South America groans under the tyranny of a priesthood which, in its highest forms, is unillumined by, and incompetent to preach, the gospel of God's free gift; and in its lowest is proverbially and habitually drunken, extortionate and ignorant. The fires of her unspeakable Inquisition still burn in the hearts of her ruling clerics, and although the spirit of the age has in our nineteenth century transformed all her monarchies into free Republics, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... Nevertheless to Thomas Clarkson Verity, man of peace and of ideas, Tandy's represented—and continued to represent through over half a century—rescue, security, an awakening in something little short of paradise from a long-drawn nightmare of hell. He paid an extortionate price for the property at the outset, and spent a small fortune on the enlargement of the house and improvement of the grounds, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... at least, in the pinch—if pinch there is to be. But remember this. Count Giraldi is the Chief Minister of this Government, and this Government is your host. Count Giraldi is therefore major-domo. Keep in with him, my dear sir, by all means, unless you desire (a) your conge, or (b) an extortionate bill for breakages and arrears. I need only mention the name of the Marchese Semifonte—no more ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to the most difficult part of it. She says that if she is compelled to leave the city and is deprived of her livelihood, she wants proper damages for it. Of course I told the woman that this, to say the least, was an extortionate demand. Well then, she says, we will ...
— Moral • Ludwig Thoma
... ensured immediate relays of horses at the post-stations. As there are no less than one hundred and twenty-two of these (from fifteen to twenty-five miles apart) between Irkutsk and Yakutsk, and as the ordinary traveller is invariably delayed by extortionate postmasters, this clause was of the utmost importance. In many other ways also the document was a priceless one, and without it we could scarcely have reached ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... handed it to trustees, with instructions to pay him only an allowance until he's twenty-four. It's a somewhat similar case to the one I've instanced—he's drawing on a capital he can't get possession of for two or three years, and no doubt paying an extortionate interest. So far as I know, no respectable bank or finance broker would ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... accession, by which he bound himself to reform the abuses which had been practiced by his brother William Rufus. The charter guaranteed: (1) The rights of the Church (which William Rufus had constantly violated); (2) the rights of the nobles and landholders against extortionate demands by the Crown; (3) the right of all classes to protection of the old English ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... as dependent on the railways as the Northwest was, the iniquity of discriminatory or extortionate rates was soon seen. The East, with rival routes and less dependence on staple interests, saw it less clearly. The charges were paid grumblingly in good times; in bad times, when the rising greenbacks ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... contains nearly seven thousand boxes, on each of which the enormous rent of $16 per annum is charged. Considering that the box system is quite as advantageous to the Government as to the box holder, this rent is simply extortionate. ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Christian charity. If anything moves his tranquil spirit, it is the remorseless greed of him who takes his fellow-servant by the throat and exacts the uttermost penny. How Sanderson saved a poor farmer from the greed of an extortionate landlord, Walton tells in his Life of ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang
... He was willing to advance on anything that had a marketable value, and which promised to yield him, I was about to say, a fair profit. But a fair profit was far from satisfying the old man. He demanded an extortionate profit from those whom ill-fortune drove to ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... and theirs was an ancient and more or less honorable profession; but Azizun has since married a medical student from the Northwest and has settled down to a most respectable life somewhere near Bareilly. Bhagwan Dass is an extortionate and an adulterator. He is very rich. The man who is supposed to get his living by seal-cutting pretends to be very poor. This lets you know as much as is necessary of the four principal tenants in the house of Suddhoo. Then there is Me of course; but ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... of the mails. The letter written, the paper was carefully folded, sealed with wax or a wafer, addressed, and carried to the post office, where postage was paid in money at rates which would now seem extortionate. A single sheet of paper was a single letter, and two sheets a double letter on which double postage was paid. Three mails a week between Philadelphia and New York, and two a week between New York and Boston, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... Mr. Garie; "it is one of the most quiet and clean cities in the world, whilst this is the noisiest and dirtiest. I always hurry out of New York; it is to me such a disagreeable place, with its extortionate hackmen and filthy streets." ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of this great and fertile colony. In an interesting paper, read before the Royal Geographical Society in November 1903, he thus characterised his administrative methods: "To rule through the native chiefs, and, while checking the extortionate levies of the past, fairly to assess and enforce the ancient tribute. By this means a fair revenue will be assured to the emirs, in lieu of their former source of wealth, which consisted in slaves and slave-raiding, and in extortionate ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 'Consuetudines abominanter inolitas.' Fornerius thinks this means 'all extortionate taxes.' Compare the English use ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... Tom, "supposing that Tom be provided for in that way; then now I comes to myself. I've an idea that I can do a good bit of work in patching up boats; for you see I always was a bit of a carpenter, and I know how the builders extortionate the poor watermen when there's a trifle amiss. Now, if they knew I could do it, they'd all come to me fast enough; but then there's a puzzle. I've been thinking this week how I can make them know it. I can't put out a board and say, Beazeley, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... from one abode to another in New York—a distance of about a quarter of a mile—I thought with glee "Now the famous express system will save me all trouble." But I found that it would cost two dollars to express my belongings, whereas even the notoriously extortionate New York cabman would convey me and all my goods and chattels for half that sum. So the Express Company's ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... were altogether removed by the establishment of a Heavers' Office under control of the Trinity House, where men could attend for employment, and where their wages could be paid with regularity, and free from extortionate deduction." ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... He saw nothing extortionate in his dealings, nothing wrong in them. When things were going well, then all was well; but when the natives resisted his charges and taxes, defrauding him of his bonus and lowering him in the eyes of his ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... The majority of revolutionists are the enemies of discipline and fatigue mostly. There are natures too, to whose sense of justice the price exacted looms up monstrously enormous, odious, oppressive, worrying, humiliating, extortionate, intolerable. Those are the fanatics. The remaining portion of social rebels is accounted for by vanity, the mother of all noble and vile illusions, the companion of poets, reformers, ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... trouble given, that L'Isle, who was annoyed at the interruption of an agreeable conversation with Lady Mabel, was about to pay him in full to get rid of him, when Shortridge peremptorily interfered. The demand was extortionate and aroused his indignation. Perhaps he looked upon the fellow as usurping a privilege belonging peculiarly to the commissary's own brotherhood. He abused the man roundly in very bad Portuguese, and insisted that L'Isle should pay ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... so much as that!" said Edith. "I don't know exactly what the value of money was in your day, but I should say the price was rather extortionate." ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... which they fluctuated again up to 28 tomans. It was with the greatest difficulty that loading camels could be obtained at all, owing to the deficiency of exports, and this partly accounted for the extortionate prices demanded. An English gentleman whom I met in Kerman told me that it was only at great expense and trouble that he was able to procure camels to proceed from Bandar Abbas to Kerman, and even then he had ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... the Golden Dragon, and called upon the Chinese people to redress their wrongs by joining his standard. But the Chinese, who regarded the Miaotze as an inferior and barbarian race, refused to combine with them against the most extortionate of officials or the most unpopular of governments. Although they could not enlist the support of any section of the Chinese people, the Miaotze, by their valor and the military skill of their leader, made so good a stand against the forces sent against them by ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... it. "The quantity is small. Still, money is very scarce and bank interest almost extortionate ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... offering to throw the Rumanian troops into the conflict on the side of the Allies for a certain consideration. This consideration was that she receive Bukowina, part of the province of Banat, and certain sections of Bessarabia populated by Rumanians. The Allies considered these demands extortionate, and the negotiations were protracted. When the Austrians and Germans, later in the spring, succeeded in driving the Russians out of the Carpathians, Rumania hastily dropped these negotiations and seated herself more firmly on top of the fence. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... eager gratitude. I preferred to buy the cabman's good-will, because I find this is a world in which I am constantly buying the good-will of people whom I do not care the least for, and I did not see why I should make an exception of cabmen. Only once did I hold out against an extortionate demand of theirs. That was with a cabman who drove me to the station, and said: "I'll have to get another sixpence for this, sir." "Well," I returned, with a hardihood which astonished me, "you won't get it of me." But I ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... "'Then you are an extortionate old scoundrel, without a scrap of a conscience,' says he. 'Hard words, sir,' says I; 'but it can't be helped. We poor fellows must submit to great people.' But all I could say wouldn't do. He vowed that he would never give me anything again, and what is more, he never ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... surgeon should be learned, skilled, ingenious, and of good morals. Be bold in things that are sure, cautious in dangers; avoid evil cures and practices; be gracious to the sick, obliging to his colleagues, wise in his predictions. Be chaste, sober, pitiful, and merciful; not covetous nor extortionate of money; but let the recompense be moderate, according to the work, the means of the sick, the character of the issue or event, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... contributes most to keeping their folks alive though, for such are the roads it is scarce possible any strangers should come near them, and our people complain that the inns are very extortionate: here is one building, however, that promises wonders from its prodigious size and magnificence; I only wonder such ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi |
