"Swindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tinker-Quixote takes the road once more and passes on to other achievements: a mad preacher to succour, a priest to baffle, some tramp to pound into a jelly of humility, an applewoman to mystify, a horse-chaunter to swindle, a pugilist to study and help and portray. But whatever it be, Lavengro emerges from the ordeal modestly, unobtrusively, quietly, most consciously magnificent. Circumstantial as Defoe, rich in combinations ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... alternative. Of course they took care to come for that before they talked of my resigning. I believe it was all planned beforehand. The whole thing seems to me to have been a swindle from beginning to end. By heaven, I'm almost inclined to think that the Duchess knew all ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... Birchard pull something?" inquired Collaton with such acute interest that Johnny felt sure he had taken no part in that swindle. ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... treachery &c 940; practical joke. trick, cheat, wile, blind, feint, plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing from the bottom of the deck; artful dodge, swindle; tricks upon travelers; stratagem &c (artifice) 702; confidence trick, fake, hoax; theft &c 791; ballot-box stuffing [U.S.], barney [Slang]; brace game [Slang], bunko game, drop game [Slang], gum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he, 'comes out of the pocket of a poor, demented girl, and I would rather starve than swindle her in ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... your mouth shut, and seeing what the improvements on the ground amount to. There's some sort of a bungalow there, built by the shooting-club. Here's a description of the place, on the strength of which I bought it. You may take these papers along to judge the size of the swindle." ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... the way, has no connection with the notorious "Arizona" diamond swindle of more recent years. It bore this name in Ives's time and the swindle was much later—1872. The alleged diamond field also was not in Arizona at ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... am sorry to say it was in other rags, but the rags they got were new instead of old,—it was a real Aladdin bargain. The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was fair with a pedler,—and I own I was glad the things were well out of Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do with the old things. Did ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... is over now, and we are going to pull through better than I expected. Don't take the matter so bitterly to heart. I admit myself that the operation promised well at first. You were misled, and so were we all, by downright deception. That the swindle was imposed on us through you was more your misfortune than your fault, and it will make you a keener business man in the future. You have worked like a galley-slave all summer to retrieve matters, and have taken no vacation at all. You must take one now immediately, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... at her back door, luckily met the policeman starting on his rounds, bade him have an eye to the customer in her shop, and came off to show it to me. That young woman is demented enough for anything, and is quite capable of doing it—for some absurd scheme. But do you think it is hers, or a swindle?' ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the Germans to induce the Mohammedan and Irish prisoners of war to desert to the German side. Liebknecht finally enraged the government supporters by calling out that the subscription to the loan was a swindle. ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... was made to detain Paul. There could be no case against him. He went out of the hotel, and looked up and down Broadway in a state of indecision. He did not mean to sit down passively and submit to the swindle. But he had no idea in what direction to ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... responded the Consul, "without fear of denial or qualification. It was disgraceful in its beginning and in its ending. It was a swindle on a large scale; and poor Maria G—— was the one who suffered ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... has been improved out of existence by the speculative nature of all business, and the consequent frequency of insolvencies. Some of the largest merchants have 'been through the Court,' as it is termed, more than once; and provided there has been no open swindle in the case, no opprobium attaches. Even when there has been swindling, it is soon forgiven and forgotten. A man who has been caught swindling is denounced at the time with an exaggerated ardour which would make a stranger think that swindles were almost as rare ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... judge nor jury seemed much interested in the convict's behaviour to the daughter of the man he had tried to swindle out of money. On the contrary, they jumped to the conclusion that his wife was morally his accomplice; and, indeed, if it had not been for her great beauty she would very likely have gone to the galleys ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bankrupt companies; our government, I say, have still been overawed from a contest with them, and have even countenanced and strengthened their influence, by proposing new establishments, with authority to swindle yet greater sums from our citizens. This is the British influence to which I am an enemy, and which we must subject to our government, or it will subject ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... taxes, in order to support a party organization the sole object of which was to enrich a few at the expense of the many. One job, in especial, the contract for paving the streets, he stigmatized as a swindle, and asserted that the District Attorney, had he done his duty, would long ago have brought the Mayor and Town Council before a criminal court as parties to a notorious fraud. His ability, steadfastness, and ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... one we are fighting against, and every one of us was a fool for ever putting on a gray jacket. Why didn't they tell us all this in the first place, so that we might know what there was before us? It's a fraud and a cheat and a swindle and a—and a—what are you about?" he added, turning almost fiercely upon his captain, who elbowed his way through the excited group and tried to take the paper from his hand. "I'll not obey the orders of the Richmond government, and that's all ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... interpreter, or valet de place. Many travellers regard such men as swindlers; but for my own part I have found them very useful. When I first visited Antwerp I employed one. I found him intelligent and gentlemanly, and, so far as I could judge, not disposed to swindle me himself or to let others do so. I paid him five francs a day, and I am sure he saved me more money than I paid him, besides taking me in the easiest and most convenient way to the various points ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... best course. It is your ONLY course. Now listen. You have undertaken to cheat my employer. You have rendered false accounts of sales, using your own clerks for sham purchasers, and employing stool-pigeon auctioneers. You have attempted to swindle him generally. I have the whole story here. You are in ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... will not dwell upon the impropriety of such conduct; but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. She assumes to be a man when she is only a woman, dons the breeches when she is only entitled to the skirts, and imposes herself upon the Duke of Venice as a learned young advocate from Rome, when in fact she is only a young damsel of Belmont, with half a ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... on Jean-Pierre. "Nobody there. A swindle of the crows. That's what this is. Nobody anywhere. I despise it. ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... year is o'er? You fear to come to want yourself, you say? Come, calculate how small the loss per day, If henceforth to your cabbage you allow And your own head the oil you grudge them now. If anything's sufficient, why forswear, Embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? Can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw Stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot yon down as mad: When with a rope you ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... ploughing in the widow's garden. You preach water and guzzle wine. You have entered into a conspiracy with the grafters of the town. You are in collusion with the people down at the Prudentia, and you are filling your own coffers in this gigantic swindle. From morning to night you enrich yourself with the hard-earned pennies of the poor. That is sharp practice, Jason Philip Schimmelweis, sharp practice, we say. Now you have got to sever all connection with the Prudentia, or the Party is ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... do not exactly want to swindle me," said Blucher, "but I know they like to get a little money, and as they do not want ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... For example, writing of the insurance plotted for rarely precedes the conspiracy to defraud. That is, I know of few cases in which a policy originally taken out in good faith has subsequently become the means of a swindle. ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... star! But the mere leader of fashion has no genuine claim to supremacy; at least, no abiding assurance of it. He has embroidered his title upon his waistcoat, and carries his worth in his watch-chain; and if he is allowed any real precedence for this it is almost a moral swindle,—a way of obtaining goods under false pretences. But without running into more minute discussion, I say again—that there is no substantial ground of supremacy in aught that is merely accidental or external; and he who rests upon such claims ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... to the already perplexing matter. It certainly looked now as though some cunning method had been employed to swindle him. ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... we could see now the whole building-up of the great intrigue. It had been worked out as carefully as the Tichborne swindle. Young Finglemore, as the brother of Charles's broker, knew from the outset all about his affairs; and, after a gentle course of preliminary roguery, he laid his plans deep for a campaign against my brother-in-law. Everything had been deliberately designed beforehand. A place ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... TO THE AFFLICTED. We are daily consulted by persons suffering from spermatorrhea and impotency who have been victimized by ignorant charlatans. Some seek to dupe and swindle the unwary by claiming to have themselves been cured of spermatorrhea or impotency by some prescription, which they offer to send free to any sufferer. When the prescription is obtained it is found to consist of a few ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... employ more or less skilled labor. With crops which are perishable or bulky, "processing" must be performed locally. Thus canneries are located where the vegetables or fruits are grown. Although the selling of equipment for cooperative canning plants has been almost as much of a swindle as promoting cooperative creameries, yet large numbers of cooperative creameries exist where conditions for them are suitable, and there seems no inherent reason why cooperative canneries cannot be made successful ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... cried the official to the trembling coach-builder, "don't you know that this gentleman wishes to go to Yakutsk, and you are trying to swindle him into buying a 'Bolshaya' coupe!" And in less than a minute I was being whirled away towards the Police Station, where a number of the peculiar sleighs required for this journey are kept on hand for the convenience ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... we wish to say one word," Fred remarked, calmly, yet firmly. "Ever since we have been at Ballarat, you have contrived a number of ways to swindle us of our money. What you have received we don't wish back into our pockets: but we do give you warning that hereafter, if you interfere in our affairs, we shall take the liberty of administering a sound kicking to that portion ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... exclaimed Wade, regretfully. "That property never was any good. The whole thing was a swindle from first to last. Was ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... New York to her funeral, there was a general regret that he had not been arrested. A flash of conviction illumed the whole fact to Basil's guilty consciousness: this unhappy Frenchman had paid a dollar for the use of an oil-skin suit at the foot of the Fall, and had been ashamed to confess the swindle to his wife, till, in a moment of remorse and madness, he shouted the fact into her ear, and then Basil looked at the mother of his children, and registered a vow that if he got away from Niagara without being forced to a similar excess he would confess his guilt to Isabel ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the broker in question do? He winked to another broker, and these two bid against one another, over their victim's head, and ran everything she wanted up at least a hundred per cent above the value. So open and transparent a swindle I have seldom seen, even in an auction-room. Ha! ha! ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... swindle of bougies is the curse of the Continental traveller. None of us are particularly prudent, but we are all on the watch against small swindles, and of them all this is the most frequent and most insidious, the most constantly and ever recurrent. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... States sat sullenly through a tangle of routine voting. Finally, the question was renewed on Butler's proposition to adopt the Cincinnati platform pure and simple. This was the red flag to the mad bull. Mississippi declared that the Cincinnati platform was a great political swindle on one half the States of the Union; and from that time on the Cotton States ceased to act as a part of the convention. As soon as a lull in the proceedings permitted, Mr. Yancey put in execution his programme of demand, disruption, disunion, and rebellion, labored for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... to me. I've bred cattle, and I know. Fetch me a list of the pious persons that have lent their names to this swindle. You, Mr. Hucks, take me upstairs; I'll explore this den from garret to basement, though it cost my stomach all that by the smell I judge it will. And you, Sam Bossom—here's a five-pound note: take it ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... him; he has bolted. It's a long-firm swindle that he's been up to. You know what that means? Obtaining goods on false credit, and raising money on them. What's more, young Chadwick is arrested; he came before the magistrates yesterday, charged with being an accomplice. Here it ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... linen of a well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most gigantic shams on record—a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place—the Hall of the Kings at Karnak ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... fish dealer friend asked some questions, and found out the shebang wa'n't a real stock dealer's at all. 'Twas what they call a "bucket shop," and we'd bought nothin' but air, and paid a commission for buyin' it. And the smilin', nice man that run the swindle had been hangin' on the edge of bust for a long while and knowed 'twas comin'. Our five hundred had helped pay his way to a ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... that he fooled away every penny he had, so that we're simply beggars, both of us, and we have to live on your charity? I should have thought that would have satisfied him, without getting locked up for being connected in a beastly bucketshop swindle.' ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... counted upon the ignorance and besottedness of Joe's client—a hard-drinking, disreputable old farmer—to get his land away from him without paying for it. Now, as every one knew such a thing to be ludicrously impossible, it was at once noised abroad in Canaan that Joe had helped to swindle Judge Pike out of a large sum of money—it was notorious that the shyster could bamboozle court and jury with his tricks; and it was felt that Joe Louden was getting into very deep waters indeed. THIS was serious: if the young man did not ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... all a cheat and a swindle," exclaimed Mr. Brooks, indignantly. "We'd better have spent the money for a horsewhip, and ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... and during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by day. The great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic of conversation throughout the Union. Individuals denounced it, journals denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic over it. Meantime the Washington correspondents ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... many long and difficult journeys, one blanket and three kegs of rum, only remained, besides the poor and almost worn out clothing on our bodies." The sending of missionaries, to labor by the side of the miscreants who thus swindle and debauch the ignorant savage, is a mockery of the office, and a waste of the time of these valuable men. If the Indians traded within our states, with our regular traders, the same laws and the same public sentiment which protects ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... has been costly to be a sleeping-partner, especially when the chief fails; that it is discouraging to economic thrift when the investments wherein you place your savings come to an untimely end; that in particular the Albert Life Insurance was a notorious swindle, wherein more than twenty years' of banked-up prudent earnings, besides the original policy, vanished in an hour; that my early efforts to win fortune were stumped from impediment of speech; and that some of those on whom I depended, as well as others dependent on me, met with misfortunes, deserved ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... he has, Luiz; so I'll tell him. At least the knowledge will gravel him and take all the joy out of that stinking little spruce swindle of his." ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... absolutely first-class article on the market. Whether it was that there never had been a business, and that Harry's inspection of works, visits to show-rooms, and examination of books, was all part of an elaborate swindle carried out with the aid of some one who possessed these accessories; or whether it was that the whole thing was bought up cheap merely to sell at a profit, was never clearly known to Harry and to Rosalie. Harry was too grieved to pursue the shock. "I'll take not a step further in the matter, Rosalie," ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... they say, 'as the twig's inclined, the tree is bent,'" Bristles told them, ponderously, "and we all can guess what'll become of Buck Lemington some day. He'll either make a striking figure in finance, or else head some big swindle that'll send him ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... thought, there could be no great risk in doing it, for my confidence in Frank was very great. I thought, of course, this would insure my claim of eighteen thousand dollars, but it eventually proved to be a deep-laid plot to swindle me. Frank had no notes or accounts that were of any value; they were all bogus and got up to deceive his poor old father and others. He had no property shipped to South America. It was all found out, ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... summat extra; an summat at wod ha made thee oppen thi e'en. Aw wor nivver so surprised i' mi life. Swindle an his wife wor thear,—an tho' it isn't oft aw tak noatice o' fowk, aw couldn't help dooin soa, an it wor a treeat ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... whole affair as too risky to be gone into without unlimited cash; but now he had a chance of making money, he determined to try his hand at the business. True, he knew that he was in for a swindle, but then he was behind the scenes, and would benefit by the knowledge he had gained. If the question at issue had really been that of getting gold out of the reef and paying dividends with the profits, Gaston would have snapped ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Republicans in 1875. The plot of these stories was always the same, but the setting shifted about here and there, and this one had to do with a county election in which, the Major said, the Republicans and negroes had gone the limit trying to swindle the Democrats out ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... average 10s per week. I suggested to her the advisability of applying for an old age pension and proceeded to fill in her papers. When she discovered that she was two months under the age of 65 she was horrified at what she thought an attempt on her part to swindle ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... of the slave-trade, advertised their proposals for a sham loan which was to be taken up under intimidation, and levied real taxes on the people in the name of the people whom they had never allowed to vote directly on their enormous swindle. With money stolen from the Government, they raised troops whom they equipped with stolen arms, and beleaguered national fortresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. They sent out secret agents to Europe, they had ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... half-hourly lectures on the other in an adjoining room - I, as his lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of Sir ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see that we get it then? That man downstairs refuses to give me any money. The whole thing is a swindle. But I don't mean to be defrauded in this ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... with loathsome and dishonorable crimes, but he brought his knavery within these respectable walls—he dared to pay his attentions to your ward, and speak words of forbidden love into her ears, while the crime of having enticed as young and respectable a girl from her comfortable home, to swindle her out of thousands of dollars, which she owned, yet lay unexpiated on the black ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... small stones himself. The experts were always finding them, so were the financial agents; yet Dick, though for a time he could find out nothing to confirm his opinion, was convinced that the whole thing meant a gigantic swindle. A few words in French between the experts which they did not expect the "man in charge of the transport" to understand a word here, and a look there, strengthened this conviction into certainty, but still ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... of van Heerden. He has heard probably from the girl Hilda Glaum that van Heerden is getting married—the underworld do not get their news out of special editions—he probably knows too that van Heerden is engaged in some swindle which is outside the parson's ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... worn out and disconsolate, gazing at a confusion of tents, sheds, and shanties, for it could be called nothing else, on the hither side of a tumbled together waste of snow and ice spreading to right and left. "Is it all a swindle or ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... the wrongdoer nominally upholds. In point of danger to the Nation there is nothing to choose between on the one hand the corruptionist, the bribe-giver, the bribe-taker, the man who employs his great talent to swindle his fellow-citizens on a large scale, and, on the other hand, the preacher of class hatred, the man who, whether from ignorance or from willingness to sacrifice his country to his ambition, persuades well-meaning but wrong-headed men to try to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... leaned forward and began the story he had rehearsed. It was a new version of an old swindle and to every self-respecting confidence man was well known as the "sick engineer" game. The plot is very simple. The sick engineer is supposed to be a mining engineer who, as an expert, has examined a gold mine ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... Shrumpf's version of his own swindle, and a tolerably correct account of the events which led ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... college, and had met its first test in action when he spoke the words that lead to the Don's death. He felt a deep contempt for most of these men who came to him with their schemes and their wares. He saw that most of them were ready enough to swindle him, though few of them would have had the courage to rob him with a gun. Probably not one of them would have dared to kill a man for money, but they were ready enough to cheat a poor pelado out of his living, which often came to the same thing. He felt that he was bigger ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... the backs of my friends' letters; how astonished many of them would be if they knew that the last half sheet they write me becomes on the spot a medium for the latest full-blown accounts of a murder, or a laugh, or a swindle, perhaps, more frequently, a flirtation! I am a bad sleeper', she adds, 'I think my brain is too active, for I always plan out my best scenes at night, and write them out in the morning without any trouble'. ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... neither was there anything mean in his wrath. It was all directed against himself. His Swedish blood had infused a gentle laziness into his temper, and he had forgiven Laidley long ago for his lifelong swindle, as no American with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... he said, "that you grow younger and more beautiful? It is dead swindle! I shall be a gray-bearded old man by the time you have grown ...
— My Mother's Rival - Everyday Life Library No. 4 • Charlotte M. Braeme
... rumours that are circulated, merely because some one has fancied such a thing might be so, are untrue. On the contrary, he assures me that applications of this nature are very seldom made, and most of those that have been made have proved to come from Englishmen, who have thought they might swindle him in this form. I have had at least a dozen such applications myself, but I take it nothing is easier, in general, than to distinguish between an American and a native of Great Britain. It was agreed between us, that in future all applications ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his heel and went, leaving me face to face with the man who had so shamefully tried to swindle me. I turned, and resting my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand, I looked mutely on the soi-disant Jean Duval and equally mutely pointed with an accusing finger to the description of the famous bracelet which he ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... nutmeg and offer it for sale. After getting to know him I learned this apparent shrewdness was a pure defense mechanism, that he was really an artless and ingenuous soul who had been taught by other hands the swindle he practiced for many years and had merely continued it because he knew no way of making an honest living. He was, like myself, unattached, and disarmed whatever lingering suspicions of him I might have by offering to share his quarters ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... we're the National Telephone Comp'ny with a reputation to lose, and if you've any ideer we want to swindle you, all I can tell you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various
... that must be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper covered with such calculations, and was somewhat puzzled by the prominence of the figure 24. An odd price to pay for a mining stock. He was afraid it was the "Adeline Maria," a notorious swindle. Well, Peckham might as well get his lesson at the hands of the faithless Adeline Maria as by any other means. He was bound to come to grief sooner or later, but that ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... traveler, who had no illusions, and was in search of adventures; one of those women who frequently change their name, and who, as they have made up their minds to swindle if luck is not on their side, act a continual part, an adventuress, who could put on every accent; who for the sake of her course, transformed herself into a Slav, or into an American, or simply into a ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... system of the world is calamitous and bad; it ought to be remedied; but war, which tries to swindle a more fortunate and able competitor for the benefit of the inexpert or the lazy, makes this vicious system worse; it enriches a ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... at least—perhaps sixteen!" said M. Binet. "Oh, the heartless blackguard! To swindle me who have been as a father to him—and to swindle me in ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... you in too—we're too intimately mixed up. If I said it was a deal of mine—they'd ask where Helena came from—they'd ask where you came from, Flopper. We're beaten—beaten every way we turn. The game has got us—we haven't a move. We played it to the limit, the slickest swindle that was ever worked, and it worked till there's more money than I've tried to count. And then it changed us from thieves, from—from anything you like—and now that we want to quit, now that we want a chance to make good, it's got us in its grip and we can't get away." He flirted a bead of ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... fellow who's run half a mile, I'll bet. If his tongue hung out any farther, he'd trip up on it. But he'll do it again next time. They all do. Learning to stop running to fires is as hard as learning to stop buying mining-stock in the West. And it's just as big a swindle too. The returns from running to fires are marvelously small. They tell me that a hundred million dollars a year goes up in flames in this country. I don't believe it. If it does, I want to know who gets to see all the fun. ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... 'for ter send ter a lidy?' 'Gentleman,' I says, 'I'm only a poor girl and a widered muver ter keep, and, gentleman, I can't tike less than two pound fer 'em sure and certain as there's a God in 'eaven, I can't.' 'Well,' says he, 'it's a blarsted swindle but I'll take 'em—and mind you deliver 'em ter the lidy yerself.' 'They shall go this very minute,' says I, 'and, oh, sir, God bless you both and may yer have long life and 'appiness ter-gether.' Strike me dead, wot ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... various capitalists in the "Yazoo Claims" was $1,500,000. [Footnote: Senate Documents, Eighteenth Congress, Second Session, 1824-25, Vol. ii, Doc. No. 14, and Senate Documents, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836-37, Vol. ii, No. 212. After the grants were secured, the companies attempted to swindle the State of Georgia by making payments in depreciated currency. Georgia refused to accept it. When the grant was rescinded, both houses of the Georgia Legislature marched in solemn state to the Capitol front and burned the deed.] The ground upon which this appropriation was made ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... mildly. "I dislike to see anyone wronged, especially a neighbor. Here is a gentleman who knows all about such matters." And Seth was formally introduced to the special agent, who took pains to explain the character of the swindle fully. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... what you want," I said, "in small sums from a number of people, you'll be able to keep control of the thing yourself, and you needn't be afraid of Ascher. Not that I believe Ascher would swindle, you. I think ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... his cigar, and glanced with astonished severity at the speaker. "Unfortunately, I have. We are wheat growers and not wheat stock jugglers. Our purpose is to farm, and not swindle and lie in the wheat pits for decimal differences. I have a distinct antipathy to ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... out of patience; "do you want me to tell you in artist language what I think of your visit? Well, you have come to swindle us ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... it was in the hands of the Germans, another that they had destroyed the plant that was ready to work it, another again, and it was the one that gained the most credence, that there was no gold in the mine at all, and that the whole thing was a swindle. The offices of the "Equator" were closed for the night. They would probably be besieged the next morning by an angry crowd eager to sell out, but the shares would now be hardly worth the paper they were written upon. Pateley, in a frenzy of anxiety, in whichever ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... for his dishonesty Who hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare to steal for a' that. For a' that and a' that, Our grabs and games, and a' that, Our business is to make a pile And swindle SAM, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... business he had ever heard of, and wondered greatly that Godfrey and Dan, whom he had always believed to be as stupid as so many blocks, should have suddenly exhibited so much shrewdness. Bert declared that it was a wicked swindle; and the earnestness with which he denounced the whole proceeding made Don laugh louder than ever. Of course the latter did not forget that the trick which so highly amused him, had been the means of placing David in a very unpleasant situation, but still ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... father is the man whom the skipper hopes to swindle!' Ping Wang exclaimed, and went off into ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... flourishes, and you don't need me to tell you which it is. Here they lie"—and he nodded to right and left of him—"dreamin' o' their money-bags, and their dividends, and their profits, and how they'll diddle and swindle one another afresh, soon as the sun gets up to-morrow. Harder 'n nails they are, and sharp as needles. You ask me why I do my walkin' out in the night-time? It's so's to avoid the sight o' their mean little eyes, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... my counsel about it; and whenever I have had occasion to mention the Company, have scarcely been able to refrain from breaking out into fierce diatribes against that complicated, enormous, outrageous swindle. It was one of many similar cheats which have been successfully practised upon the simple folks, civilian and military, who toil and struggle—who fight with sun and enemy—who pass years of long exile ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them. Cyril was right and knew that he was right. Orestes was a scoundrel, hateful to God, and to the enemies of God. The middle classes were lukewarm covetous cowards: the whole system of government was a swindle and an injustice; all men's hearts were mad with crying, 'Lord, how long?' The fierce bishop had only to thunder forth text on text, from every book of scripture, old and new, in order to array on his side not merely ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... has come to light, and every investigation, in the opinion of the ablest and most sagacious men, confirms the assertion that the late MASON and SLIDELL difficulty was simply an immense stock-jobbing swindle, played in the most heartless manner on this country and on England, without heed as ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... broke the bed. This was carrying things rather too far. Not satisfied with rendering me, by his intrusive and unsolicited confidence, a sort of tacit accomplice in his manoeuvres, this Dutch Gil Blas would fain make me an active participator in the swindle he was practising on the actress and her mother. I drew at sight on my imagination, quickened by the peril, for a letter received the previous evening from a dear and near relative who lay dangerously ill at Baden-Baden, and to whose sick-bed it was absolutely necessary ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... the swale; and listening to the swindle of the flail, as it sounds dub-a-dub on the ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... men are supported entirely by stolen secrets, from the coachman who claims ten louis every month of the foolish girl whom he drove to a rendezvous, to the elegant dandy in light kids, who discovered a financial swindle, and makes the parties interested buy his ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... conveyance to which they are thus suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a miserable night. A few of us are glum, and revolve horrible thoughts; but the majority soon come to regard the matter as such a stupendous swindle as to be positively ridiculous. They accordingly grow merry as the night waxes, and make up in song what they ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... who, occupying a position of trust, planned to swindle the Metropolis Trust Company through forged notes and checks," Rochester stated with slow emphasis. "Jimmie Turnbull learned that you, Clymer, were to visit Colonel McIntyre on Monday night, and he went there in disguise to find out if his suspicions were correct. The ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... gesture, the other pushed it back. "What's the use of reading?" he said. "When I heard of the arrest of that poor Jottras, I guessed at once what was in store for me. It is about the Mutual Credit swindle, I imagine." ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... intrigue with a nun, he was forced to fly from Perugia, where he resided: and after a series of strange and not very creditable adventures, he arrived in England. Here he declared himself a Protestant; but, after some years, wishing to swindle the English Jesuits out of an annuity, be again returned to their order. Having got all he could from them, he again returned to Protestantism, and wrote his "History of the Popes," which was his principal ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... whole thing. It was nonsense! None of it could be true. What were all these people saying to her, Eugenia, Mrs. Powers, this boy . . . ? She would never forgive them for trying to do such an infamous thing. They were trying to make her believe that Neale had been back of Lowder in the low-down swindle that had been practised on the Powers. They were trying to make her believe that for seven years Neale had been lying to her with every breath he drew. Because other men could lie, they thought they could make her believe that Neale did. Because other ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... little and big—the smaller thieves thinking that they also must live, no matter at whose expense, although I demur to the proposition. Why should they stop at stealing a thousand or two, more or less, while that four hundred thousand swindle leered at them so wickedly over the left shoulder, mocking at all law and justice, and scot free from all punishment? These 'traders' could charge what sums they liked against the Indian, and get them too; for ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... father to son, and from son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... number of people, and on investigation was found to have been fraudulently conducted from the very beginning. John Sadleir thereupon killed himself; his brother James was expelled from the House of Commons, and he and several others implicated in the swindle fled the country and never reappeared, and so the "Brass Band" broke up, amid the well-deserved contempt of men of every ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... you the world is a liar; it does not keep its promises. It is a cheat, and it fleeces everything it can put its hands on. It is a bogus world. It is a six-thousand-year-old swindle. Even if it pays the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for which you contracted, it pays them in bonds that will not be worth anything in a little while. Just as a man may pay down ten thousand dollars in hard cash and get for it worthless scrip—so the world passes over ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... that final disintegration of his great soul was the interest he took in the atrocious frauds of spiritualism. He was even duped into believing in the cheap swindle of table-tipping. The bliss of Robert Browning's home was broken up in this same form, of all-encompassing credulity, only it was Mrs. Browning who was the spiritualist in this case and resisted ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... by false reports?dost thou know it might be brought under the statute of leasing-making? Answerand for once in thy long, useless, and evil life, let it be in the words of truth and sincerity,hast thou such a coach?is it in rerum natura?or is this base annunciation a mere swindle on the incautious to beguile them of their time, their patience, and three shillings of sterling money of this realm?Hast thou, I say, such ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... either if it wasn't for a little affair connected with some horses and a cheque. You see, the War Office people sent down a perfect idiot to buy remounts for the cavalry in Galway and Mayo. He was the sort of idiot that would tempt an Archbishop to swindle him. I rather overdid it, I'm afraid, and now the matter is likely to ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... even stranger than that," he said. "I can introduce you to a man who's in this room now, who was fighting the Ship-building swindle, and he got hold of a lot of important papers, and he took them to his office, and sat by while his clerks made thirty-two copies of them. And he put the originals and thirty-one of the copies in thirty-two different safe-deposit vaults in the city, and took the other copy to his home in ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... enough, it seems to me, to be an optimist on the edge of this earth as it is, to keep on believing in people and things on it, without having to believe besides that the earth is a huge round swindle just of itself, going round and round through all heaven, with all of us ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a fraud," went on the wounded soldier. "To the best of my knowledge, he comes from Philadelphia, where he used to run a mail-order medical bureau of some sort—something which the Post-office Department stopped as a swindle." ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... creative spiritual impulse; it was purely mechanical, and such intellectual work seemed to me lower than manual labour. I despise it and I do not think that it for a moment justifies an idle, careless life, because it is nothing but a swindle, and only a kind of idleness. In all probability I have never ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... pair of shears, tossed the coin in the air, listened to its ring on the desk with a satisfied look, slipped the whole twenty-franc piece into his pocket—regular fare, fifteen francs, irregular swindle, five francs—and handed me the billet. Then he added, with a trace of humor ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... circus. Everyone enjoyed it and wished to see it again—everyone but the Maloneys. They said it was a swindle, and ran Dad down because he did n't divide with Paddy the 3s. 6d. he took ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... death-duties will be annoying. What a beastly swindle the death-duties are! Why, I shall suffer even on your own little ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... house stood well, as rectories generally contrive to do. No place in Flamborough parish could hope to swindle the wind of its vested right, or to embezzle much treasure of the sun, but the parsonage made a good effort to do both, and sometimes for three days together got the credit of succeeding. And the dwellers therein, who felt the edge of the difference outside their own walls, not only said but ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, if you accomplish ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... tribewn, Thou Shameless and Unjust; Thou Swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth, august; Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy, For die ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... at last, and neatly tore out of place an item near the bottom of a page. It told of a swindle astoundingly perpetrated by a gang of confidence men in the city where the paper was published. The scheme was to induce greenhorns to invest in or loan money on mining stock of some companies that had no existence except on paper. The Little Wonder Bonanza Mining & Milling Company ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... swindling policy for the Government of the United States. In its day of trouble the Government was glad to promise gold to the people who had confidence in them, and just as gladly the Government proposed to swindle them by a silver falsehood in 1877. But the Nation was just recovering from a four years' drunk; Mr. Hayes undertook to steady us, during the aftereffects of our war-spree. Why should we neglect to pay in full the price of our four years' unrighteousness? As a ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... must not suffer, or the artist has been proved unequal to his design. And, on the other hand, no form of words must be selected, no knot must be tied among the phrases, unless knot and word be precisely what is wanted to forward and illuminate the argument; for to fail in this is to swindle in the game. The genius of prose rejects the cheville no less emphatically than the laws of verse; and the cheville, I should perhaps explain to some of my readers, is any meaningless or very watered phrase employed to strike a balance in ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to compliment me, Sir?" asked Mr. Burt. "You've got some kind of subscription paper, I suppose." The old gentleman began to warm up as he thought of it. "But I can't give any thing. I never do—I never will. It's an infernal swindle. Some deuced Missionary Society, or Tract Society, or Bible Society, some damnable doing-good society, that bleeds the entire community, has sent you up here, Sir, to suck money out of me with your smooth face. They're ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... possible from the wreck, you decided to unload your white elephant on somebody else. I was the readiest victim. You were the executor of my father's estate—you were my guardian and financial adviser, and so you found it very, very easy to swindle me!" ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... the professional politicians all stand in together when a financial swindle is being carried out. There is no "opposition" in these things. Since it is the very business of the Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official Capitalist Press, one may truly say that a great part of the energies of the Free Press is wasted in this "groping in ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... furniture, and that's all he knows. If he's an American he'll buckle down to that little business and work night and day, sweat blood and make every one else connected with him sweat it, underpay his employees, swindle his friends, half-starve himself and his family, in order to get a few thousand dollars and seem as good as some one else who has a few thousand. And yet he doesn't want to be different from—he wants to be just like—the other fellow. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... few articles (for which a leading French paper received L100,000) were instrumental in enabling the Panama Canal Co. to swindle the French public of forty million pounds sterling, and more recently, where through Press agency it became feasible to a combination of Jesuitism and militarism to seduce by far the greater portion of the noble French nation into frenzied agitation and ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... trying to get the better of anybody else. There were fellows never happy unless they were doing someone in the eye. He had known men who would ride at the devil himself, make it a point of honour to swindle a friend out of a few pounds! Odd place this 'Monte'—sort of a Garden of Eden gone wrong. And all the real, but quite inarticulate love of Nature, which had supported the Colonel through deserts and jungles, on transports at sea, and in mountain camps, awoke in the sweetness of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... other as he spoke, which didn't improve the man's temper. Accustomed to swindle others, he did not fancy being practised ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... highly revered Colonel, had also undertaken to purchase a number of horses and mules for me. "The people of Goyaz," said he, "are terrible thieves; they will swindle you if you buy them yourself. I will purchase them for you and you will then pay me back the money. By to-morrow morning," he had stated, "I shall have all the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor |
