"Highway robbery" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... honors—multiplying it perhaps by four or six to bring out its effective amount in current coin. Dog cheap, it must be owned, for size and capability; but in the most waste condition, full of mutiny, injustice, anarchy, and highway robbery; a purchase that might have proved dear enough to another man than ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... up before a justice of the peace, and fine you anywhere from fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars. It's regular highway robbery—there are some places that boast of never levying taxes; they get all their money out ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... famous outlaw and his merry men, clad all in green, were the popular heroes. On Robin Hood's day the whole population turned gaily out to celebrate his festival, never weary of singing or hearing the ballads which commemorated his exploits. Robin was a robber, but in times of disorder highway robbery has always been an honorable occupation, and the outlaws of Sherwood Forest were reputed to give to the poor what they took from the rich. Diligent enquiries have been made to ascertain whether the personage ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... escapes without punishment. Some examples have occurred recently which show that the judges of the superior courts are alive to their duty and that they can perform it when the occasion arises. A man named John H. Wood, a former soldier, was convicted of highway robbery, and he was speedily sentenced to imprisonment for life in Folsom Penitentiary. Judge Cook who passed sentence on him took the position that a man who used a deadly weapon in the commission of his crime should receive the full penalty of the law. A man who ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... much, I, too, went to board with the widow and learned every detail of Wiley's stay. One of Hillery's oldest friends had a son who had gone to the bad and was serving a term for highway robbery in a prison near Phoenix. I found that Wiley had taken a great interest in the lad and paid him more than one visit, promising to use his influence to have him pardoned. I went to Phoenix, talked with this prisoner and a few others, ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... "I have committed a highway robbery by marrying your daughter Isabel, at Warwick Street Church, and before the Registrar—the details she is writing to her mother. "It only remains to me to say that I have no ties or liaisons of any sort, that the marriage is perfectly legal and respectable. I want ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... wealthier cities and the knights who infested the trade routes leading to and from them. Still, these belligerent relations were taken as a matter of course; and no disgrace, in the modern sense, attached to the occupation of highway robbery. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... and the police of New York City had no trace of his whereabouts; but Mr. Michael Chalmette, an officer detailed by the U.S. Marshal in New Orleans to arrest Leon Sangrado, at the request of the Republic of Chili, on the charge of repeatedly committing murder and highway robbery in that country, was entirely sure that the missing person was sitting beside him, handcuffed to his left wrist, and that both were speeding toward New Orleans as fast as a railway-car could ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... stultified the scheme, that was all. Selpdorf forgot that Sagan is a wild beast who can only be fed with blood!' Counsellor paused. 'The highway robbery with violence to which I have been subjected is Sagan's bull-headed translation of Selpdorf's hint to detain me. Thus, according to their calculations, before I can get to Revonde the Duke will have been induced to lend himself to some other course. ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... story, which bade fair to be better for the newspapers than for us on board the Belle Helene; for, up and down the river, the wires might carry the news that a crazy man had been guilty of piracy, highway robbery, abduction, I know not how many other crimes; and to arrest him on his mad career they might enlist all the authorities, municipal, county, state and even national. "John Doe," said I to myself, "if I really were you, methinks I should make haste." None the ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... exclaimed, getting on my feet, a hideous mass of egg-shells and indifferent egg-flip; "it's highway robbery! This man is in possession of my property—proceeds of a burglary—I'm Kippen, the pawnbroker, No. 319; he's got my clock in his pocket now. I—I give him in charge, constable, I give him in charge! Why don't ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... meditative, tugging at his insufficient moustache. Suddenly he gave vent to a noiseless laugh. "What a rush it was! Rushed in and off with his girl right under his nose. Planned it well too. Talk of highway robbery! Talk of brigands Up and off! How juiced SOLD he must be feeling It was a shave ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... primitive simplicity, foreswore life in the towns "under the bell," and made their homes in the mountains or other remote places. Gathered in small bands with such arms as they could secure, they sustained themselves by highway robbery and the levying of black-mail ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... refutation of any sophism whatever. This is the best compromise which we can put forward with the present dilemma in Greece, where it seems that to be armed or to be unarmed is almost equally perilous. But our secret opinion is, that in all countries alike, the only absolute safeguard against highway robbery is—a railway; for then the tables are turned; not he who is stopped—incurs the risk, but he who stops: we question whether Samson himself could have pulled up his namesake on the Liverpool railway. Recently, indeed, in the Court of Common Pleas, on a motion to show cause by ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... not such a regulation tend to involve necessitous men in the commission of crimes? If they are prevented working for six weeks, it might lead them to procure support for their wives and children by burglary, larceny or highway robbery." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... about any event that has happened a hundred miles away, and stories of murders and robberies that were never committed are widely circulated amongst the credulous people. As far as my experience goes highway robbery is unknown in Nicaragua. Foreigners entrusted with money have stated they have been robbed, but there has always been suspicions that they themselves embezzled the money that they said they lost. Personally I never carried arms for defence in the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... enclosing herself in a chest with a spring lock[7]—of the girl frightened into complete idiotcy by those who placed a skeleton, or, as some say, a skull only, in her bed[8]—and of ladies, bishops, &c. obtaining their livelihoods privately by highway robbery[9], with similar narratives, rather romantic than superstitious, are general property, and to be met with under various modifications throughout England. The tale of the King of the Cats[10], a German tradition, has its exact counterpart in an Irish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... were, acute reasoners, sophists, casuists. We had no doubts, fears or suspicions of them, and they thought no evil of us. Some of them we invited to a reading in our tower; and once we enacted the "Aminta" with great applause: Beltramo, a very engaging boy (afterwards hanged for highway robbery and prison- breaking), Violante, an unfrocked priest called Il Corvo, Virginia and I took parts. Beltramo I never saw again but once, and that against my will. I saw him hanged at Genoa in 1742. A curious life indeed, which, to one so addicted ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... was hung on Gibbett Hill, site of Oscott College, for murder and highway robbery. Catherine Evans was hung February 8, 1742, for the murder of her husband in this town. At the Summer Assizes in 1773, James Duckworth, hopfactor and grocer, of this town, was sentenced to death for counterfeiting and diminishing ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... to see the mothers crowding around, begging and pleading for their children to be taken in, and the little tots weep and wail when they have to go home. I feel to-day as if I would almost resort to highway robbery to get money enough to ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... no little experience of them, say afterwards, "I only knocked down the walls of the Bannu forts; John Nicholson has since reduced the people to such a state of good order and respect for the laws, that in the last year of his charge not only was there no murder, burglary, or highway robbery, but not an attempt at ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... commit highway robbery upon none but small school children, and then only under the stimulus ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... daughters were given the munificent gratuity of L10 a-piece by the Council Board, and forbidden for the future to ask for any further assistance, might certainly plead extenuating circumstances[503] if he took to highway robbery. Such circumstances as these were common at this period; and it should be borne in mind that the man whose holding was worth but L40 a-year felt the injustice, and resented the inhumanity of his expulsion, quite as ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... never!" she gasped. "If I haven't robbed that poor, innocent young man of a book he bought for himself! Attempted eviction by his room-mate, and bold highway robbery by an unknown woman! No, it's worse than that; it's piracy, for it happened on the high seas." And the girl laughed ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... highly probable that the Rajah and all his counsellors were implicated in the plot. But how to bring it home to them Dermot did not know. By his secret instructions several of the messengers to and from Bhutan were the victims of apparent highway robbery in the hills. But no search of them revealed anything compromising, no treasonable correspondence between enemies within and without. The men would not speak, and he could not sanction the proposals made to him by which they should ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... the might that is mine, of trickery, of highway robbery, clear out of that, you, and make room for me: give me your seat at the banquet! That is the inexorable law in the world of animals and more or less, alas, in our own world ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... things they did and said. For there were no cares in that life, no aches and pains, and not time enough in the day (and three-fourths of the night) to work off one's surplus vigor and energy. Of the mid-night highway robbery joke played upon me with revolvers at my head on the windswept and desolate Gold Hill Divide, no witness is left but me, the victim. All the friendly robbers are gone. These old fools last night laughed till they cried over the particulars ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... made known to the wounded sufferer the chaplain spoke. "You see the case that is building up against you, Powlett, and just as soon as you are able to sit or stand the court will meet for your trial. You have assault with intent to kill, at Bluff Siding if not at Urbana, highway robbery, theft, desertion, conspiracy, and kindred crimes to answer for; would it not be infinitely better that you should confess fully and at once? Even the men whom you have so bitterly wronged join in no clamor ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... abolished; and yet to- day, the Republican party is faced by a 'solid south,' in which the negro is deprived, substantially, of all his political rights, by open violence or by frauds as mean as any that have been committed by penitentiary convicts, and as openly and boldly done as any highway robbery. By this system, and by the acquiescence of a few northern states, the men who led in the Civil War have been restored to power, and hope, practically, to reverse all the results of ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... round that night while we were discussing the qualities of the mountain-goat flesh, but yet I felt annoyed at our feat; the thing, to be sure, had been gallantly done, still it was nothing better than highway robbery. Hunger, however, is a good palliative for conscience, and, having well rubbed our horses, who seemed to enjoy their grazing amazingly, we turned to repose, watching ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... fortunes, and feebly said something about taking some mules off my hands at a fair price, I shut him off firmly. Whenever that old crook talks about taking anything off your hands he's plotting as near highway robbery as they'll let him stay out of jail for. He was sad when I refused two hundred and fifty dollars a span for my ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... to be lodging in the inn that night one of the officers of the Holy Brotherhood of Toledo, whose duty it was to travel the roads and inquire into cases of highway robbery. He hearing some time later that a man was lying in the house sorely wounded must needs go and make an examination of the matter. He therefore lighted his lamp and made his way to ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... principles," admitted Cabot, "but circumstances alter cases. I consider the highway robbery that two of the most powerful nations of the world are attempting right here a circumstance strong enough to alter any case. So I would advise you to accept the only offer now remaining open. You will at least get enough groceries ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... troubles. I saw a crowd of peasants demand from a local landlord all the grain and foodstuffs in his granary. This puzzled me; I could not understand how honest men were indulging in what seemed to be highway robbery. But I noted at the time that every man who was taking part in this incident was a drinking man, while their fellow villagers, who were abstemious, had sufficient provisions in their own homes. Thus it was that I observed the industrial effects of ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... is not a reason, rivalry in business is not a reason, need of expansion is not a reason. These are excuses only, not causes of war. There is no money in war. There is no chance of highway robbery in the byways of history which can repay anything tangible of the expense of the expedition. The gray old strategists do not care for this. It is fair to them to say they are not sordid. They care no more for the financial exhaustion of a nation than for the ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... energy and initiative. Most of the attempts made against the public peace in the free States and along the northern border came, not from resident conspirators, but from Southern emissaries and their Canadian sympathizers; and even these rarely rose above the level of ordinary arson and highway robbery. ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... was tried for murder, the judge decided that as the man had laid a hand on the bridle, the rider had reason to suppose that he intended to take it as well as the horse, which would have been an illegal act; consequently he was justified in defending himself against highway robbery; and therefore the charge must be dismissed. Again, a Roman Catholic proprietor found out that an effort was likely to be made to deprive him of his estate. He rode up to Dublin on a Saturday; on Sunday he received the Holy Communion at a ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... reason is that nobody seems to take the trouble to get what might be proper bait for sailfish. Mullet is an easy bait to get and commands just as high a price as anything else, which, as a matter of fact, is highway robbery. With a bait like a ballyhoo or a shiner I could get ten bites ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... their book is good or bad, provided it sells well. How many young people have been ruined by bad books, and how many more by foolish books! Boys, for example, read in some worthless book of desperate deeds of highway robbery or piracy, and are at once filled with the desire to imitate the hero of the tale. Young girls, on the other hand, are equally infatuated by the wonderful fortunes and adventures of some young woman whose life has been so vividly ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... hollers Peter, fetching the tea chest a belt. "One thirty-four do I hear? Make it one thirty-three fifty. Fifty cents do I hear? Come, come! this is highway robbery, gentlemen. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... honor him by making him the leader of their march of destruction. This worthy had lost his hand during youth, and replaced it with a hand of iron. He was bold, daring, and unscrupulous, but scarcely fitted for generalship, his knowledge of war being confined to the tactics of highway robbery. Nor can it be said that his leadership of the peasants was voluntary. He was as much their prisoner as their general, his service ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... authority in 1753, did much to suppress the unbridled license and open highway robbery ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... of the happy days when there is "nothing in the papers"—that is to say, nothing interesting, absorbing, soul harrowing, in the form of financial ruin, highway robbery, murder, arson, fire, or flood. Everything in the world at the present brief hour seemed going on well, consequently the papers were very dull, flat, stale and unprofitable, and were soon laid aside by the host and his guest, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... arrives from England, and brings cattle from the Cape A marine settler killed Natives A criminal court held Taylor executed Lowe punished A highway robbery Provisions in store Ration altered June, two whalers come in from sea Ideas of a whale-fishery Tempestuous weather Effects The Albion whaler arrives from England Her passage July, a missionary murdered The murderers tried and executed Orders published ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... train in two, so as to pull half of it at a time up the grade at Lamy, and so there were only six cars on this end of it. The other half is seventy miles back, and part of what we have here ought to have been left at the way stations. I can't make out, sir, whether it's burglary, or highway robbery or arson an' murder he's guilty of, or all of 'em; but I've telegraphed for instructions and I'll hold him a prisoner until the superintendent tells me what to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... things went badly with him. Success made him abominably conceited, and being without any morality self-confidence drove him to disastrous lengths. Now once more he was very near destruction and he knew it, very near things like forging and highway robbery, and other things worse than they. He knew that he was very near; he peered over into the pit and did not wish to descend. He was not a bad man, and had he not believed himself to be a clever one all might yet have been well. The temptation ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... was encountered many obstacles. A merchant who went by land from country to country might expect to find bad roads, few bridges, and poor inns. Goods were transported on pack-horses instead of in wagons. Highway robbery was so common that travelers always carried arms and often united in bands for better protection. The feudal lords, often themselves not much more than highwaymen, demanded tolls at every bridge and ford and on every road. If the merchant proceeded by water, he must face, in addition ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... ready uncomplainingly to lay down his life for his friend. One who in an eastern city is merely a backbiter and slanderer, in the western woods lies in wait for his foe with a rifle; sharp practice in the east becomes highway robbery in the west; but at the same time negative good-nature becomes active self-sacrifice, and a general belief in virtue is translated into a prompt and determined war upon vice. The ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his debts paid a couple of times and is then forced to resign from ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a stage hold-up or some scrape of that kind every week or two!" replied Tommy with a wink at Will. "We remained over at Green River a couple of days and heard a good many stories about highway robbery. There is said to be gold in these mountains," the boy continued, "and there is also said to be a band of brigands who lie ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the laws of tenure, the Town Tenants Act of 1906, which Mr. Balfour denounced as highway robbery, gives tenants in towns compensation for disturbance so as to prevent a landlord making a vexatious use of his rights. An attempt was made by the House of Lords to limit the compensation so paid to one year's rent, but the rejection of the amendment by the House of Commons was acquiesced ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... Red. Because of prior conviction he was serving fifty years for highway robbery committed on the streets of Alameda. He had already served a dozen of his years at the time he talked to me in the jacket, and that was seven years ago. He was one of the forty lifers who were double-crossed by Cecil Winwood. For that offence Philadelphia ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... have done. Did I collar you, Dr. Slop? Send in your bill tomorrow! Did I smash the instruments beyond repair? And should you say now,—just speaking off-hand,—that two hundred and fifty dollars would be money enough to repair them? Of course, I can commit highway robbery, if it be absolutely necessary. My dear Mrs. Gamp, I fully appreciate the propriety of your suggestions. You want one quart of gin;—I comprehend. Shall it be your Hollands, your Aromatic Scheidam, your Nantz, or our own proud Columbian article? You want one quart of rum, potus e saccharo confectus! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... themselves into a Grand Committee to consider of the advice to be given to the King. From the concise abstracts and fragments which have come down to us it seems that, in this Committee, which continued to sit many days, the debates wandered over a vast space. One member spoke of the prevalence of highway robbery; another deplored the quarrel between the Queen and the Princess, and proposed that two or three gentlemen should be deputed to wait on Her Majesty and try to make matters up. A third described the machinations of the Jacobites ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Empire, and the prosperity and the culture which then prevailed, were made possible solely through the facilities which were given to inter-migration. Good roads connected the ends and dissected the width and breadth of the great Roman Empire. Travel was well protected. A well-drilled army suppressed highway robbery, and an excellent navy put down piracy. A resident of Gaul could with ease settle in Syria, while the Syrian, if he so desired, could find with ease a home in Gaul. The residents of Brittania and Greece could with comparative ease inter-migrate, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... the simple expedient of finding a house, knocking at the door, and asking! You don't suppose, do you, that seven or eight able-bodied men can commit highway robbery upon one of His Majesty's coaches and their neighbours be none the wiser? I tell you, these rural parishes are the veriest gossip-shops on earth. Go to a city if you want to lose a secret, not to a God-forsaken ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man, and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with Pa. I like you, because you are no ordinary sneak thief, you are a high-toned, gentlemanly sort of a bilk, and wouldn't take anything you couldn't lift. O, keep your seat, and don't get excited. It does a man good to hear the truth from one who ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... respectable family, son of the sheriff of Warren County, Ky. He fell into bad company and bad habits at New Orleans, drinking and gaming, until for an act of highway robbery he was sent to the penitentiary. The reader will observe the general activity of the intellect and the adjacent social sentiments indicated by the translucency, and the general torpor, indicated by ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... way to get a thing done well is to do it yourself—and a tip never bought any special service yet," declared the angry Tom. "It is merely a form of highway robbery." ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... early, ate fast, came home dispirited and over-weary, even from success; grudged himself all pleasure, if his nature was capable of taking any, which I sometimes wondered; and laid out, upon some deal in wheat or corner in aluminium, the essence of which was little better than highway robbery, treasures ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... indomitable governor could not endure the thought of surrendering the majestic province of New Netherland to a force of four frigates. He regarded the movement, on the part of the English, as an atrocious act of highway robbery. But he was well aware that there was no escape ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... exclaimed the lieutenant. "If because a vile system is carried on openly it is to be considered honest, then slaving is honest, and piracy, and highway robbery, for that matter. See, however, her gallant skipper is not afraid of us. Look, with what a self-satisfied air he walks the deck with his gold-lace cap, and glass under his arm. They are preparing to lower a boat, and he'll ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... happiness must, and would crown that marriage union. And thus far, it has followed it, and must continue to follow it, for John Barclay is a man of high-toned principle, and would as soon think of committing a highway robbery, as violating his pledge. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... Gillis, who was again in Virginia, conceived a plan which would make it not only necessary for him to lecture again, but would supply him with a subject. Steve's plan was very simple: it was to relieve the lecturer of his funds by a friendly highway robbery, and let an account of the adventure furnish the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... we walked briskly across the silent square, "covers a multitude of sins, ranging from highway robbery with violence and paid assassination (technically known as 'bashing') down to the criminal folly of the philanthropic magistrate, who seems to think that his function in the economy of nature is to secure ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... arrested by the New Granada authorities, justice had a hard struggle for the mastery, and rarely obtained it. Once I was present at the court-house, when an American was brought in heavily ironed, charged with having committed a highway robbery—if I may use the term where there were no roads—on some travellers from Chili. Around the frightened soldiers swelled an angry crowd of brother Americans, abusing and threatening the authorities in no measured terms, all of them indignant that a nigger should presume to judge ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... sixth, all girls, died in infancy or early childhood. The seventh, a girl, remarried after the death of her husband, from whom she had been separated. The eighth, a boy who early in life began to exhibit criminal tendencies, was in prison for highway robbery and burglary. The ninth, a girl, normal mentally, was in quarantine at the Kansas State Industrial Farm at the time this study was made; she had lived with a man as his common-law wife, and had also been arrested several times for soliciting. The tenth, a boy, was involved ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... surprise to other nations, and of congratulation to ourselves, that at the present such crimes against persons and property as burglary, pocket-picking and highway robbery are much rarer in proportion than in any other cosmopolitan city in ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... post-offices in Bermondsey. Dr Lee disappeared from the neighbourhood the instant the state of his leg enabled him to do so, and I have never seen him since. John Wyatt, alias Black Jack, was transported for life, under the alias of John Martin, for a highway robbery near Fareham, in the year 1827. Lately I saw him on board the convict hulk ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... shall we not be allowed to alight from our palfreys till we have heard his full welcome to my Lord, and all his plans for this place, how—it is to be made a sanctuary for the sick during their abode there, for all causes saving sacrilege, treason, murder, burglary, and highway robbery, with a license to eat flesh on a Friday, as long as ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evening and twilight overtook her in the open ground which extends to the foot of Gunnerby Hill, and is intersected with patches of copse and with swampy spots. The extensive commons on the north road, most of which are now enclosed, and in general a relaxed state of police, exposed the traveller to a highway robbery in a degree which is now unknown, except in the immediate vicinity of the metropolis. Aware of this circumstance, Jeanie mended her pace when she heard the trampling of a horse behind, and instinctively drew to one side of the road, as if to ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... speakers were, and what was the subject of their conversation. The former, after a little time, I discovered to be three of my fellow-convicts—one of them a desperate fellow, of the name of Norcot, a native of Middlesex, who had been transported for a highway robbery, and who had been eminently distinguished for superior dexterity and daring in his infamous profession. The latter, however—namely, the subject of their conversation—I could not make out; not so much from a difficulty of overhearing what they ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... more to the crowd. "I move that you apologize to Mr. Phillips. Are you game?" Her question met with a yell of approval. "Now, then, there's a new case on the docket, and the charge is highway robbery. Are you ready to vote a verdict?" Her face was ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... the remarkable circumstance that Popham, afterwards Lord Chief Justice in the reign of Elizabeth, took to the road in early life, and robbed travellers on Gad's Hill. Highway robbery could not, however, have been considered a very ignominious pursuit at that time, as during Popham's youth a statute was made by which, on a first conviction for robbery, a peer of the realm or lord of parliament was entitled to have benefit of clergy, "though he cannot read!" What ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... The story of the man's crime was a short and simple one. He had been ringleader in a highway robbery lately committed, and taken in the very act, with the booty upon his person. The evidence was clear as daylight; no one attempted to dispute it or deny ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... treaties with respect to missionaries and takes no steps to protect them will easily yield to the temptation to infringe on the rights of other citizens. Is it not possible that because our government has allowed outrages against our missionaries to go on since 1883 in Turkey,—highway robbery, brutal assault, destruction of buildings,—without any demonstration beyond peaceful and patient argument, the Ottoman government is now proceeding in so highhanded a manner to prevent by false allegations the importation ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... 'Highway robbery and attempt at murder,' said the agent. 'Simpkins, you are constable, take this man in charge, while I make out his committal. Stay!' he added, 'the cage is very insecure, and this is no trifling case. You had better take him up to the castle, my lord will examine him in the ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... you, Hume, I don't like it. It's a piece of damned highway robbery and I'm rotten sorry I ever ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... to the guidance and protection of God, mixed with a quiet jocularity with which "Master Francis Fletcher, preacher in this employment," from whose notes the "World Encompassed," which is a narrative of this voyage, was compiled, speaks of acts very little different from highway robbery, such as would now be held disgraceful in open war; as for instance, on meeting a Spaniard driving eight llamas, each laden with one hundred pounds' weight of silver, "they offered their service without ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... such a nature as his, and he continued, possibly from habit, the tortuous courses which he had pursued for profit of Mr. Bentley. After a few tentative and resultless undertakings in the way of highway robbery—if one may venture to designate road-agency by so harsh a name—he made one or two modest essays in horse-herding, and it was in the midst of a promising enterprise of this character, and just as he had taken the tide in his affairs at its flood, that he made ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... "HIGHWAY ROBBERY—(Particulars). There is no clue whatever to discover the parties who committed this atrocious act—but two Irish labourers who live in the neighbourhood are, ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... five fields" of Lord Grosvenor's, because he thought London might extend that way. Those five fields are now covered with the palatial streets of Belgravia,—but were then a dismal marshy flat intersected by black ditches, and notorious for highway robbery, as a district dimly lit with an oil lamp here and there, and protected by nothing but the useless old watchman in his box: it is the tract of land between Grosvenor Place and Sloane Street. His lordship had a reputation ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... of an aristocrat; you drag a valuable whip out of the hand of his coachman; and you carry it off. If that is not highway robbery, what ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... a young man, was very dissipated, and belonged to a club, most of whose members took an infamous course of life. When his lordship was engaged at the Old Baily a man was convicted of highway robbery, whom the judge remembered to have been one of his early companions. Moved by curiosity, Holt, thinking the man did not recognise him, asked what had become of his old associates. The culprit making a low bow, and giving a deep sigh, replied, "Oh, my lord, they are all hanged but ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... slowly in an open carriage, when suddenly they were ordered to stop by several men of French appearance, who were thought to be disbanded soldiers. This adventure made a great noise in a neighbourhood, where highway robbery is extremely unusual. We breakfasted at a neat inn in the village of Lassera, and afterwards went to see the chief curiosity of the place, the separation of a rivulet into two branches, one of which falls ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... that I chose a very inappropriate place for my purpose. 'The Old Homestead' there is furnished with a telephone, a livery-stable, and all the modern protections against highway robbery. Besides, there is a cold chicken and a bottle of choice claret in the basket with which to supplement the larder of our host of the inn. We will take luncheon while my chauffeur is placing us on an even keel again, and no time will be lost. You will even have ten minutes in ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... join me in a marauding expedition? Like the poet Villon, I am about to turn marauder, house breaker, thief. I shall hope to end the excursion by one act, at least, of highway robbery. I shall lose courage without the enlivening presence of ces dames. We will start when the day is at its best, we will return when the moon smiles. In case of finding none to rob, the coach of the desperadoes will be garrisoned with provisions; Henri will accompany us as counsellor, purveyor, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of discontent and repining generally prevails in a colony. People who have lived miserably in England, who have long doubtfully hovered between suicide and highway robbery, determine at length to adopt the still more melancholy alternative of emigration. After bequeathing a few tender sighs to the country which they have hitherto regarded rather as a step-mother than a parent; and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... "you think this is funny; but it isn't. You do not realize what you are doing. Why, this action of yours will be construed as highway robbery and no man on the Street will trust you. You must think of your future in business. If this leaks out nobody will ever ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... forgery, of which crimes corresponding statistics show likewise a corresponding decrease, but for the crimes of violence too, tending to murder, such as are many of the incendiary offences, and such as are highway robbery and burglary. But another return, laid before the House at the same time, bears upon our argument, if possible, still more conclusively. In table 11 we have only the years which have occurred since 1810, in which all persons convicted of murder suffered death; and, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... sight. But he was incapable of generosity, in the sense of voluntarily sacrificing any selfish interest for a noble end; and if he patted Connecticut on the back, it was only in order that she might view with toleration his highway robbery of her sister. ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... Something, to be sure. The establishment of world credit systems is built on splendid and realizable faith in fellow-men. But it is, after all, so low and elementary a step that sometimes it looks merely like honor among thieves, for the revelations of highway robbery and low cheating in the business world and in all its great modern centers have raised in the hearts of all true men in our day an exceeding great cry for revolution in our basic methods and conceptions of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... not so sure of that, my daughter. I don't entirely like the tone of some of these remarks. They lack vim, they lack venom. Here is one calls it a 'questionable measure.' Bah, there is no strength in that. This one is better; it calls it 'highway robbery.' That sounds something like. But now this one seems satisfied to call it an 'iniquitous scheme'. 'Iniquitous' does not exasperate anybody; it is weak—puerile. The ignorant will imagine it to be intended for a compliment. But this other one—the one I read last—has the true ring: ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... a rough backwoods bunch always drifting about Clinch's place in those days. There were fights. And not so many miles from Clinch's there was highway robbery and ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... by playing pitch-and-toss on a tombstone: playing fair, for what we know: and even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From pitch-and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if necessary: to highway robbery; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah! heaven be thanked, my parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as poultry-snatching is, plagiarism is worse. Facilis descensus Averno! From highway robbery and crimes of violence one sinks gradually to literary petty larceny. However, there are coarsely effective poems in the volume, such as A Super's Philosophy, Dick Hewlett, a ballad of the Californian school, and Gentleman Bill; and there is one ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the light of his wife’s dip, until day began to break, when, to avoid being recognised, they went off, having to content themselves with what spoil the second man could find in the room below. On another occasion, a narrow escape from highway robbery occurred in Woodhall under the following circumstances. It was at the time of the great August Fair at Horncastle, much larger at that time (in the forties) than it is at the present day; for it then lasted some three weeks. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... means, to prevent myself from being deprived of my luxuries—liquor and cards. Is that a roundabout way of saying I intended to act the highwayman, perhaps the—murderer—on this occasion? By no means, madam! What is highway robbery? Is it not the brutal and wanton robbery of the poor as well as the rich? Well, I was not going to rob anybody. I was going to request a small loan—and so far from intending violence, or—murder—," he uttered that word always ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left highway robbery no longer capital, than what the guilty might gain by it. They have lost those great privileges in their trial, which the law allows, in capital cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation. They have lost ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... the boldest highwaymen in Mexico. Had we started an hour or two later we should have met them in the forest, and have had an adventure to tell of. As it was, the descent of three thousand feet had brought us from a land of thieves to a region where highway robbery is never known, unless when a party from the high lands come down on a marauding expedition. It is an unquestionable fact that the Mexican robbers, whose exploits have become a matter of world-wide notoriety, all belong to the cold region of the plateaus, the tierra fria. Once ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... hitherto faithful servant is remonstrated with for having committed a crime, he not unfrequently accounts for the fact by saying, "Senor, my head was hot." When caught in the act on his first start on highway robbery or murder, his invariable excuse is that he is not a scoundrel himself, but that he was "invited" by a relation or ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... liberty, thanked the leader for his kind words, but he said there was a strong feeling in the east against truly good people like himself taking tainted money, and while he would not want to make a comparison between the methods men adopt to secure tainted money, in business or highway robbery, he hoped the gang to which he had been elected an honorary member would not insist on his carrying away any of ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... gentleman, then was a tapster's boy at the Red Lion, at Brentford; got into service again, was butler to Sir Dennis Daltry; took to gambling; was suspected of being a confederate in robbing his master's house of plate; was dismissed. At the age of 24 took to highway robbery; stopped a coach on Hounslow Heath, and eased the passengers of about L11; with others committed several robberies on Bagshot and Hounslow Heaths; was arrested for attempting to rescue Captain Lennard, one of his accomplices, but ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... truth, has said, 'war is murder,' the plunder of private property, the pillage of all the regular rewards of honest industry and laudable enterprise, upon the mere pretence of a national contest, in the eye of justice can appear in no other light than highway robbery. If, however, some apology for the practice is to be derived from the incontrollable law of necessity, or from the imperious law of war, certainly there can be no possible excuse for those who incur the guilt without being able to plead the palliation; for those who ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... an idea, father, dear," she said more gently, "but somehow I cannot believe that this was just ordinary highway robbery. This road is supposed to be quite safe: travellers are not warned against armed highwaymen, and marauders wouldn't be so well horsed and clothed. My belief is that it was a paid gang stationed at the broken bridge on purpose to rob us ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... brigandage, foray, razzia[obs3], rape, depredation, raid; blackmail. piracy, privateering, buccaneering; license to plunder, letters of marque, letters of mark and reprisal. filibustering, filibusterism[obs3]; burglary; housebreaking; badger game*. robbery, highway robbery, hold-up* [U.S.], mugging. peculation, embezzlement; fraud &c. 545; larceny, petty larceny, grand larceny, shoplifting. thievishness, rapacity, kleptomania, Alsatia[obs3], den of Cacus, den of thieves. blackmail, extortion, shakedown, Black Hand [U.S.]. [person who commits ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... a corner of the shrubbery leading up to the house, and found themselves suddenly face to face with Mrs Rimbolt with a gentleman and two or three of her lady guests. Jeffreys flushed up as guiltily as if he had been detected in a highway robbery, and absolutely forgot to salute. Even Raby, who was not at all sure that her aunt had not overheard their last words, was taken aback and looked confused. Mrs Rimbolt bridled up like a cat going into action. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... which were paid to Afghan chiefs as bribes to keep them quiet. Macnaghten had objected to this retrenchment, pointing out that the stipends to the chiefs were simply compensation for the abandonment by them of their immemorial practice of highway robbery, but he yielded to pressure, called to Cabul the chiefs in its vicinity, and informed them that thenceforth their subsidies would be reduced. The chiefs strongly remonstrated, but without effect, and they then formed a confederacy of rebellion. The Ghilzai chiefs were the first to act. Quitting Cabul, ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... had then given him the choice of going to jail, or of acting under his instructions, in which case he would be well rewarded. Naturally, he had chosen the second alternative. And, having him completely under his thumb, John Dormay had made him sign a paper, acknowledging his attempt at highway robbery upon him. ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... to be proved," argued Loring. "Your only way to get possession of them is through the courts. Your present action has no better legal status than highway robbery." ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... to no such highway robbery! You may have a dance, Captain Sayre,—take a waltz, if you like; and then give me my card again. Do ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... raise herself, but she felt sharp pain. She heard some one leaping over the fence near her, and wondered, without moving her head, if it could be a tramp bent on highway robbery. The next instant, a man was leaning over her. "It's not a tramp," she thought, before ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... with a shocked look—"but you misunderstand. He spoke of such things as burglary and highway robbery, and you could never have helped him ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... farmers were undermined from the capital down to the smallest village. Slaves and desperadoes associated themselves in robber-bands, of the dangers of which an idea may be formed from the fact that in a single year (569) 7000 men had to be condemned for highway robbery in Apulia alone; the extension of the pastures, with their half-savage slave-herdsmen, favoured this mischievous barbarizing of the land. Italian agriculture saw its very existence endangered by the proof, first afforded ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sentenced under the name of James Wilson—the same initials as those of James Wharton of Queensland—to twelve months' imprisonment for vagrancy. Of the sixteen years he passed in Victoria he spent thirteen in prison, first for stealing, then in steady progression for highway robbery and burglary. Side by side with the practical and efficient education in crime furnished by the Victorian prisons of that day, Butler availed himself of the opportunity to educate his mind. It was during this period that ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... is regarded as a very grave offence. Analogous to our crime of piracy is the forcible arrest of ships at sea and the transfer to them of valuables. Sometimes the Kosekin pirates give themselves up as slaves. Kidnapping, assault, highway robbery, and crimes of violence have their parallel here in cases where a strong man, meeting a weaker, forces himself upon him as his slave or compels him to take his purse. If the weaker refuse, the assailant threatens to kill himself, which act would lay the other under obligations ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... accomplices are admitted from the policy of justice, otherwise confederacies of crime could not be dissolved. There is no rule more solid than that a man shall not entitle himself to profit by his own testimony. But an informer, in case of highway robbery, may obtain forty pounds to his own profit by his own evidence: this is not in consequence of positive provision in the act of Parliament; it is a provision of policy, lest the purpose of the act should ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... could my strange disappearance and long stay be explained? What would be thought of my staying in this disreputable den with criminals and social outcasts? To whom could appeal be made for proof, but to this poor, old wench, who had been in the employment of the four, two of whom are charged with highway robbery? Would not my friends and acquaintances feel averse to further association with such a person? They might suspect that both Oswald and I had ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... How she was the home of lies and flies, the grave of reputation, the refuge of the remittance man and the bad egg; the land of the unexpected pest, but never the unexpected blessing; of sunstroke and fever; scandals and broken careers; snobbery, bobbery, and highway robbery. How, yet, when one had been away from her for a little while, sometimes for a few months only, one forgot all these things and remembered only with hunger and aching the pink-tipped hills of her, the crystal ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... sense of honor cultivated by the relationship sustained to the chief was reflected by the most obscure inhabitant. Instances of theft from the dwelling houses seldom ever occurred, and highway robbery was never known. In the interior all property was safe without the security of locks, bolts and bars. In summer time the common receptacle for clothes, cheese, and everything that required air, was an open barn or shed. On account of wars, and raids ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... Darmstadt circle of ladies. She is in love with Pedro, but Pedro is not the hero of the piece. That place is assigned to his eldest brother Crugantino, a scapegrace, with a noble heart, who, finding the ordinary bonds of society too confined for him, has taken to highway robbery. "Your burgher life," he says—and we know that he is here uttering Goethe's own sentiments—"your burgher life is to me intolerable. There, whether I give myself to work or enjoyment, slavery is my lot. Is it not a better choice for one of decent merit to plunge into ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... stopped at the Transvaal frontier, and the English gold it carried, valued at L500,000, was seized by the Transvaal Government. Whether that capture be regarded merely as a premature act of war or as highway robbery, it leaves no room for doubt as to which side in this quarrel is the aggressor; and when at last the challenge came, even chaplains could with a clear conscience, though by no means with a light heart, set out ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... three little coloured boys came out from behind the rock and went through the scene of a highway robbery. Little Jim Gibbs, his white teeth and gleaming eyeballs making his face seem as black as night by contrast, strode out with a high silk hat, a baggy umbrella, and an old carpet-bag. He was evidently intended ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Council of Chicago as "thugs, thieves, and ex-convicts," and in his testimony before the Commission itself he said: "Some of the deputy marshals who are now over in the county jail ... were arrested while deputy marshals for highway robbery."[26] Several newspaper men, when asked to testify regarding the character of these United States deputies, referred to them variously as "drunkards," "loafers," "bums," and "criminals." The now well-known journalist, ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... that gipsies could steal," he thought, "but only in a little petty, pilfering way. This is highway robbery, and if I give them all I've got they ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... show that it is "an illusion" to believe that war ever pays, because it is expensive. This is precisely like arguing that we should disband the police and devote our sole attention to persuading criminals that it is "an illusion" to suppose that burglary, highway robbery and white slavery are profitable. It is almost useless to attempt to argue with these well-intentioned persons, because they are suffering under an obsession and are not open to reason. They go wrong at the outset, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hundred miles on the road without being stopped: there was scarcely a newspaper, in which there were not two or three instances of persons, of every rank, being stopped. It was quite an unusual thing formerly—but of late there has been a regular system of highway robbery. The laws that have been enacted to put down this horrible state of things, will serve for an index of the condition of the colony. They do away with every appearance of personal liberty. 'One act empowered magistrates ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... a million dollars for my wife—money which justly belongs to her—and another half million for my services as your attorney, wherein I agree to prevail upon my wife not to prosecute you for murder and highway robbery, but to permit you to live on and await the retributive justice that is bound to overtake you. I think this is perfectly fair and square. You have used your money and your power for evil. I am going to use mine for good. Have the kindness, my dear T. Morgan Carey, ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... complete without him: no circle 'the right thing,' unless Buckhurst, as he was long called, was there to pass the bottle round, and to keep every one in good-humour. Yet, he had misspent a youth in reckless immorality, and had even been in Newgate on a charge, a doubtful charge it is true, of highway robbery and murder, but had been found guilty of manslaughter only. He was again mixed up in a disgraceful affair with Sir Charles Sedley. When brought before Sir Robert Hyde, then Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... hat! Oh, Poll, I'm scared to death," Lois said, trembling, when they came up to it. Murder and every possible form of highway robbery passed through her mind. ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... today. It had its uses and was not a piece of senseless tyranny. In order to keep up an armed force for all emergencies the Baron took under his protection as men-at-arms the most desperate ruffians, outlaws and outcasts whom he could collect, mostly men under sentence of banishment or death for highway robbery and murder, whose only chance of escaping torture and death lay in risking life and limb for a master strong enough to defy the law, the 'bargello' and the executioner, in his own house or castle, where such henchmen were lodged and fed, and were controlled by nothing but fear ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... as there are now, other ways of preying upon our fellow-creatures and levying blackmail from them, without going to the length of highway robbery—cold work, and a ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... what delightful dinners you give; but these little dramatic episodes which you offer your guests, by way of appetizer, are certainly unique. Last year an elevator stuck in the shaft with half the company in it, and this year a highway robbery, its daring punishment and its reckless repetition—what the newspapers will call "A Triple Mystery" when it gets to them—and both victims among our commensals! Really, I don't know what more we could ask of you, unless it were the foot-padded footpad himself as a commensal. If this ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... excel. The most important, and that which required the greatest share of cunning and address, was undoubtedly that of the chalan or jockey, who frequented the fairs with the beasts which he had obtained by various means, but generally by theft. Highway robbery, though occasionally committed by all jointly or severally, was probably the peculiar department of the boldest spirits of the gang; whilst wielding the hammer and tongs was abandoned to those ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... flavour was exhausted. Brailstone took his lesson and departed, to spy at them from other boxes and heave an inflated shirt-front. Young Cressett, the bottle of effervescence, dashed in, and for him Livia's face was motherly. He rattled a tale of the highway robbery of Sir Meeson Corby on one of his Yorkshire moors. The picture of the little baronet arose upon the narration, and it amused. Chumley Potts came to 'confirm every item,' as he said. 'Plucked Corby clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... accustomed to give way to the impulse of the moment. Their effect is to make them little able to resist the temptation of procuring money without working for it. The passion for the game leads many to borrow at usury, to embezzlement, to theft, and even to highway robbery. The land and sea pirates, of whom I shall speak presently, are principally composed of ruined ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... expect from me," said Mr. Wyndham, "exciting tales of adventure, and hairbreadth escapes by sea and land. I have never read a dime novel in my life, and therefore couldn't undertake to rival them in highway robbery, scalping Indians, and bowie-knives and revolvers. My heroes were never left on a desert island, nor escaped with difficulty from the hands of cannibals, nor were pursued by hungry wolves; and never even saw a lion or tiger except behind the bars of ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... we consider the statistics of crime generally (including sexual crime), that there is another tendency for minor climaxes in spring and autumn. Thus, in Italy, Penta, taking the statistics of nearly four thousand crimes (murder, highway robbery, and sexual offences), found the maximum in the first summer months, but there were also minor climaxes in spring and in August and September (Penta, Rivista Mensile di Psichiatria, 1899). In nearly all Europe (as is shown by a diagram given ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... remember you," he said. "But I'll remember you next time. Are you standing guard now, or just doing a little highway robbery on your ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... or it's highway robbery, no matter how one looks at it," he said to himself. "I wonder what's the matter with me. I must have got started wrong somehow. Money to spend, playing at soldiering, made to believe I'd have a pot of money and an estate, and then told one fine ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... anticipation when young Breckenbridge rode forth armed with a warrant for John Ringo. For Ringo was a bad man of larger caliber than even Curly Bill. He was the brains of the outlaws, and the warrant charged highway robbery. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Pirates. It is rare to find it now complete. The old folio editions have been often mutilated by over use; the many later editions in octavo are mutilated by design of their editors; and for conveying any idea of the rough truthful descriptiveness of a book compiled in the palmy days of highway robbery, they are worthless. ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... somewhat quicker than seed. The best are cut from the road-side, but it is a hateful despoiling of one of the fairest of travellers' joys. Those who commit this highway robbery should reckon themselves in honor bound to sow the bare places they leave behind. Some people cut the pieces eighteen inches square, some about a yard long and twelve inches wide. Cut thin, roll up like thin bread ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on board a Lowestoft fishing lugger, where he has to suffer many buffets from his shipmates. The storms and dangers which he braved are set forth with intense power. The narrative deals with a highway robbery, the trial of the accused fisherman, his escape, and the mad chase after the criminal out upon the ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... of the king of the Gibichungs. He tears the ring from her finger, and, claiming her as his wife, drives her into the cave without pity for her agony of horror, and sets Nothung between them in token of his loyalty to the friend he is impersonating. No explanation of this highway robbery of the ring is offered. Clearly, this Siegfried is not the ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... merchant. Banks there were by this time: but most people preferred keeping their own money in their own houses. Also banks being few everybody carried gold: this partly explains the prevalence of highway robbery: very likely the passengers on any long stage coach carried between them some hundreds of guineas: a whole railway train in these days would not yield so much: for people no longer carry with them more money than is wanted for the small expenditure of the day: tram, omnibus, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... most interesting case of a local character of capital punishment for highway robbery with violence and sheep-stealing combined, was one which occurred to a Royston gentleman, for which it is necessary to travel a dozen years beyond ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... taxation. He admits its necessity. The State is obliged to perform certain duties for the community. It is obliged, for example, to make its roads fit for travelling, and so render them passable for the transfer of merchandise. It is bound to clear away all brigandage, highway robbery, and the like, for were this not done, no merchant would venture out through that State's territory, and its people would ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... carry to the islands many slaves—negroes, for the most part. Those are generally the worst ones that they have, and they are drunkards, thieves, and fugitives, who take to highway robbery; and they endanger the country considerably, because of their number. Will your Highness be pleased to order that no one of the said negroes or slaves be carried thither, when twelve years old or over, under ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... Marescalchi; leaning tower; lady-professor of Greek; Carbonari; theatre; women; barbarous dialect. Bonn: Electoral palace; Roman antiquity; legends of the Sieben Gebirge; Das Heimliche Gericht. Bordas, M, politics of. Borgo San Donino, remarkable highway robbery at. Borromean Islands, splendid villa in Isola Bella. Bourbons, the: want of patriotism of the Duc de Berri, their injudicious conduct; Louis XVIII and Monsieur at Ghent; amusing nickname of Louis XVIII; dislike of the French people to; their atrocious policy; send emissaries to South of France ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... plundered party loses in highway robbery is gained by the robber. The article stolen remains, at least, in the country. But under the dominion of bounty robbery, that which the duty takes from the French is often given to the Chinese, the Hottentots, Caffirs, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... under the Turks. The traditional ballads give us vivid pictures of the heyduks, or brigands. Highway robbery up till, and well into, the nineteenth century was both a lucrative business and a sport which well suited the lazy but adventurous spirit of the people. It perpetuated in fact the everlasting raids of one noble against another in pre-Turk days. To this day a Montenegrin "junak" delights in pillaging ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... plantations, with bags, aprons, or pinafores, full of fir-cones, and wood snapped off from the trees, or plucked out of the hedges. There was no end to repairing the fences. There were unpleasant rumours, too, of its being no longer safe to walk singly in the more retired places. No such thing as highway robbery had ever before been heard of at Deerbrook, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant; the oldest of the inhabitants being Jim Bird, the man of a hundred years. But there was reason now for the caution. Mr Jones's ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... Drake. Thenceforth he pursued his natural course without pretense of let or hindrance. At the time when this story begins, no fewer than fourteen warrants were out for his apprehension, issued on charges ranging from burglary and highway robbery through a long list of felonies. But the warrants, slowly accumulating, lay in the bottom of official drawers, apprehending nothing but dust. No one undertook to serve them. Life ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... piratical, prohibitive, and profitable. We shall stop just this side of highway robbery. Therefore our demands will be cheerfully, nay, willingly met; and everybody, including you and me, Sophy, will be satisfied ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... accordance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not so calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in consequence of a collision with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... ever hear crazier rubbish?" he asked, with contempt. "Highway robbery, I call it, to send us such stuff for our ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... sparkling blue eyes, and forms of intoxicating grace and beauty—ah me! why should such dangers be permitted to threaten the defenseless traveler with instant destruction, when the law provides for his protection against other disasters by land and sea, assault and battery, false imprisonment and highway robbery? Yet here were lovely creatures, gliding about at large, shooting mutilation and death out of their bright blue eyes, and apparently as indifferent to the slaughter they committed as if it were ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne |
