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Fleeced   Listen
adjective
Fleeced  adj.  
1.
Furnished with a fleece; as, a sheep is well fleeced.
2.
Stripped of a fleece; plundered; robbed.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fleeced" Quotes from Famous Books



... could cheat, and had indeed stolen money in that way from his companions, and there was nothing Josiah Slam liked better than dealing with a weaker member of his own fraternity. He allowed Marriner to cheat him a little, and pretended not to discover it; played at being vexed; drew him on, and fleeced him of ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... for Raven appeared intent on putting as large a space as possible between himself and the camp of the Stonies. The discovery of the fraud he knew would be inevitable and he knew, too, that George Macdougall was not the man to allow his flock to be fleeced with impunity. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor

... Sandhurst. All this with Jack Blunt's long expected ruin, and a spicy court-martial or two, furnished a running accompaniment to Anstruther's expensive "personally conducted tour" into the intricacies of ecarte, led on by the coolest safety player who ever fleeced a griffin. Truly these were golden moments. The Major's cool steady eyes were sternly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... if silver-sandalled foot Of some long-hidden God should ever tread The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... and asked no more about him, for I have a horror of nailers at any sort of pool, having once been hopelessly fleeced by ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... do this work required, before 1789, about 200,000 collectors, besides the administrative corps,[3222] occupied one half of their time for two successive years in running from door to door, miserable and detested, ruined by their ruinous office, fleecers and the fleeced, and always escorted by bailiffs and constables. Since 1800, from five thousand to six thousand collectors, and other fiscal agents, honorable and respected, have only to do their office-work at home and make regular rounds on given days, in order to collect ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... al-Shrif." For the expenses of the process see my Pilgrimage iii. 12. As in all "Holy Places," from Rome to Benares, the sinner in search of salvation is hopelessly taken in and fleeced by the "sons of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... that if she had ground to fear resentment, it was not Mossup's but his. Wilkinson had manners, but she knew he did not like to be robbed of an easy victim, and it was possible that he had let Bob win until he was drunk enough to be fleeced. She waited a few moments to let the others go, and then went upstairs and stopped in a passage that led to her room. Her face was hot and she breathed fast, for her part in the scene had cost her something. It would have been different ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... these ruinous rates, and now alas, the Nile is sadly lingering in its rise, and people are very anxious. Poor Egypt! or rather, poor Egyptians! Of course, I need not say that there is great improvidence in those who can be fleeced as they are fleeced. Mustapha's household is a pattern of muddling hospitality, and Mustapha is generous and mean by turns; but what chance have people like these, so utterly uncivilized and so isolated, against Europeans of ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... fanatic and the "easy mark" of to-day are seldom aware of any of these things, and so they are bled, fleeced, and exploited accordingly. "All is Mind!" "Great is Elijah!" or "Mrs." Elijah, and Oahspe is his Prophet! while Babel reigns in the ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck

... one Mr Newton, alias Neville, alias Fane, and with a dozen other aliases, has been arrested at Padua for swindling. This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the Continent In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever

... weren't you the very person for me to get money out of? . . . You were a wealthy man and had everything you wanted. . . . Your marriage was an idle whim, and so was your divorce. You were making a lot of money. . . . I remember you made a scoop of twenty thousand over one contract. Whom should I have fleeced if not you? And I must own I envied you. If you grabbed anything they took off their caps to you, while they would thrash me for a rouble and slap me in the face at the club. . . . But there, why recall it? It is high ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... in sad array Proved how his victims he had fleeced and shorn Approach and read (if thou canst read) my lay, Writ on him more in ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... are palmed off upon them by unscrupulous wretches. They are drawn into gaming and are fleeced out of their money. Dozens of sharpers are on the watch for them, and woe to them if they fall into ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... affairs under his control. He loved organizing, persuading, casting skilful nets. His appeal for subscriptions was irresistible. He had the magical gift of wringing a hundred pounds from a plutocrat with the air of conferring a graceful favour. In aid of the Mission to Convert the Jews he could have fleeced a synagogue. The societies and institutions in which the Colonel and Ursula Winwood were interested flourished amazingly beneath his touch. The Girls' Club in the Isle of Dogs, long since abandoned in despair ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... for a few hundred yards there seemed no alternative but to swim across, so in I went, greatcoat and all. It was awfully cold. At first my clothes and fleeced-lined flying boots held the air and supported me, so that I lay on the surface of the water as if bathing in the Dead Sea, feeling very ridiculous. But only too soon everything filled up and I felt like ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... Soldiers were fleeced out of bounty money. Substitutes, quite frequently colored men, were paid large sums as bounties, more money than they had ever seen before. By collusion between officers and clerks in Blumenburg's office, and the substitute brokers, the substitutes were induced to invest in valueless gewgaws, ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith

... beneficiaries Wanted things so inexorably until she got them Waves of sweetness and regret flooded his soul Weighing you to the ground with care and love Went out as if afraid of being answered What do you mean by God? When you fleece you're sorry When you're fleeced you're sick Where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight Whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom With the wisdom of a long life old JoIyon did not speak Witticism of which he was not the author was hardly to his ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger

... separate the rams so that the lambs will be born at a favorable season. The flocks consist of sheep and goats which are allowed to run together at all tunes. Black sheep and some with a grayish color of wool are often seen among them. No attempt is made to eliminate these dark-fleeced members of the flock, since the black and gray wool is utilized in its natural color in producing many of the designs and patterns of the blankets woven by these people. The flocks are usually driven up into the corrals or inclosures ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... The violets of five seasons re-appear And fade, unseen by any human eye; Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam, And—with my cheek on one of those green stones 35 That, fleeced with moss, under [10] the shady trees, Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep— I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and, of its joy secure, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... a snowy fleeced lamb to be offered in sacrifice. It was decked with wreaths, and bleated piteously. Presently it was killed, and its blood was caught in vessels to be taken home and smeared on doors and walls to drive away blight and pestilence from the dwellings ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... white passed over an open moor, fleeced here and there with scanty bushes, which gave the detective all the cover he needed. But the girl did not look back, and the night was dark. The clouds were thicker too, and the very air seemed so full of rain that an incautious movement would bring it spattering about one's head, as a shake ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele

... the morning two rather well-dressed black-eyed men came on board. The conductor told us they were the pests of that part of the road—three card-monte men—and that in spite of being carefully warned many travellers, especially amongst the well-to-do farmer class emigrating to Manitoba, were daily fleeced by them, there being no apparent redress, as they are sharp enough to evade any direct breach of the law. These men succeeded in drawing two boys of eighteen or twenty into their toils, and obtained possession of their watches, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon

... swarmed an unnumbered host of dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass. Banks were exploded,—or robbed,—or fleeced by astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces, and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of villains. The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher

... Disciple," we see a young sharper on a boat on the Volga. He has the tired eyes of a precocious old man, stubby fingers, and the hands of a murderer alert to strike the fatal blow. He has just fleeced a party of travelers, and he discovers, in a savory conversation with an old cheat, who has found him out, that his soul is being consumed with insatiable desires. And as the old sharper admires the "savoir-faire" of his young friend, the latter observes, not without scorn, that they ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... to the American woman. This brunette used strong perfumes and burned like a crater. Despite all her blandishments, Des Esseintes wearied of her in a few short hours. But this did not prevent him from letting himself be fleeced, for the phenomenon of the ventriloquist attracted him more than did ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... XXXV. A black-fleeced lamb AEneas slays, to please The Furies' mother and her sister dread, A barren cow to Proserpine decrees. Then to the Stygian monarch of the dead The midnight altars he began to spread. The bulls' whole bodies on the flames he laid, And fat oil on the broiling ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... business you have selected for a career, it will not be long before you will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost, where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks. With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary, and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a fakir, you will rise to become a barker for a ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck

... his guardians serious uneasiness. He was in the hey-day of youth when he visited Italy, and he entered wildly into the various delights of that fascinating region, and, what was worse, falling into the hands of certain sharpers, not Italian, but English, he was fleeced of considerable sums of money. The abbe, who, it seems, was an excellent individual of the old French school, remonstrated with his pupil on his dissipation and extravagance; but, finding his remonstrances vain, very properly informed the guardians of the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... he seems Than Agamemnon, Atreus' mighty son, But shoulder'd broader, and of ampler chest; 230 He hath disposed his armor on the plain, But like a ram, himself the warrior ranks Ranges majestic; like a ram full-fleeced By numerous sheep encompass'd snowy-white. To whom Jove's daughter Helen thus replied. 235 In him the son of old Laertes know, Ulysses; born in Ithaca the rude, But of a piercing wit, and deeply wise. Then answer thus, Antenor sage return'd. Princess thou hast ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... slanting down The second bar. Thereover strode A Wether, fleeced in burning brown, And largely ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... know. Maybe it's a lunatic, or some poor fellow whom Muchmore has fleeced out of all his ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster

... done this by thyself, lazy one," exclaimed Venus, on her return. "To-morrow I will see whether thou art indeed able to do anything. Beyond the river which flows past my temple are golden-fleeced sheep, roaming without a shepherd. Do thou bring to me a portion of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester

... city, however, did not belong to him, but became a republic; notwithstanding which it was at first compelled to pay a contribution, amounting to twenty million francs, to Napoleon, to maintain a strong French garrison at its expense, and was fleeced in every imaginable way. A stop was consequently put to trade, the wealthiest merchants became bankrupt, and Napoleon's satraps established their harems and celebrated their orgies in their magnificent houses and gardens, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... she appeared never so comely in their sight as that day, and they were inflamed with the beholding of so much beauty, proposed as the price of so great manhood; and they cried out that if all those heroes who sailed to Colchis for the rich purchase of the golden-fleeced ram had seen earth's richer prize, Penelope, they would not have made their voyage, but would have vowed their valours and their lives to her, for she was at ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... face their first sergeant and "the Old Man" at the orderly room. Oh, wonderful things were told of old Shiner and his ranch! In the eyes of some straitlaced commanders he had been little better than a receiver of stolen goods, a soldier Shylock who loaned moneys at usurious interest, a gambler who fleeced the trooper folk of their scanty pay, a dispenser of bad liquors and worse morals. Some truth there may have been in some of these tales, yet Shiner had been a strangely useful man. He supplied ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King

... daughter, who he is? he is less indeed in height[158] than Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, but is broader to behold in shoulders and breast. His arms lie up on the fertile earth, but he himself, like a ram, goes round the ranks of the men. I for my part compare him to a thick-fleeced ram, which wanders through a ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter. When a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like gambling or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather

... evening drew on, a refreshing coolness came to relieve the densely packed and scorching travellers. The effect of such a change was like that which would have been observed among a flock of heavily fleeced sheep, which, after gasping for breath beneath trees and hedges, during the time of the sun's power, are seen scattering over their pastures to feed, or to play their antics, as a grateful shade succeeds to cool their ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... brother, and there was nothing he would not do for Julia. So, sometime after the mud-clerk had ceased to speak, the striker gave utterance to both impulses by replying, "He's no friend of mine," a little crisply, and then softly adding, "Though I shouldn't like to see him fleeced." ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston

... Knox. A poor, barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and so ever and anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk, soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee, fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadows speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope of Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshes drained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, all circled the great Abbey round with the ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... than by the druggist—artful old quack! It was to him the sufferers had to turn, to such straits were they reduced. Drugs were booming, and the druggist, not satisfied with the normal hugeness of his profits, slipped into the fashion and fleeced all round with unprecedented flagrancy. A purgative proclamation—classing pills as "necessaries"—was called for, but it never came. Obese folk, fearful that their flesh was falling off in lumps, drank freely of cod liver oil. On ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... her daughter to take their mother's place as queen. They turn first into two golden pear-trees. These are destroyed by fire, but one glowing coal from the fire is eaten by an old she-goat. The old goat then has two little golden-fleeced kids. They are killed, an old crow swallows a piece of the entrails as they are being washed in the brook; she flies to the seventy-seventh island in the ocean, builds a nest and lays two golden eggs. Out of the eggs come ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... noble ideas; and of her interest in game; and round its neck the inscription in golden letters, 'Perdix fovit quae non peperit.'[4] Then, for her spear, she might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of her Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field and the legend 'In the best market,' and her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for a piece of money to ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... at all, Sarah!" he declared, with vehemence; "your pa is a sick man, and unless he gets a doctor soon you may lose him. So I'd just pocket that pride of yours, and let the neighbors do what they want. And if you've been fleeced by that shark of a Squire Lemington, why, there are a lot of others in the same fix. I'd like to see them run him out of town; but he owns a heap of property around Riverport, and that would be hard to do, I suppose. Say, don't that coffee ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... you're suspicious, and keep your eyes open, you can tell when something's going on. That Pillows man you scared knows, and Peaney acts like the man of mystery in one of the kind of plays we get around here. It's breaking out all over them.... I'll bet they've fleeced Ovid, and now they're hiding him—to save themselves ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland

... made appear that he was Wellington's right hand; so that he obtained the sobriquet of "Waterloo Sedley." He again returned to England, and became the "patron" of Becky Sharp (then Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, but separated from her husband). But this lady proved a terrible dragon, fleeced him of all his money, and in six months he died under very ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... the ideas of the masters, are unintelligible to me, a muzhik. What I do myself, I know, but what they are after I cannot tell. For thousands of years they have punctiliously and consistently pursued the business of being masters, and have fleeced and flayed the skins of the muzhiks; and all of a sudden they wake up and want to open the muzhik's eyes. I am not a man for fairy tales, brother, and that's in the nature of a fairy tale. That's why I can't get interested in them. The ways of the masters are strange to me. You travel in winter, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky

... It is stated that never in history were novels so atrociously mediocre as they are to-day. And in the second place, the author will insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this scoundrel every time the two meet. Already I have heard that one publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his country house, has been obliged to reduce the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... statute-book stringent penal laws against gambling, but they were a dead letter, unless some poor dupe made a complaint of foul play, or some fleeced blackleg sought vengeance through the aid of the Grand Jury; then the matter was usually compounded by the repayment of the money. The northern sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue between the Indian ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... came up brightly as we sailed out into the Gulf. By-and-bye clouds fleeced about it and formed a peculiar halo resembling a cross. We took that for a good omen. We were speculating whether we were to go by Belle Isle or Cape Ray, but about nine o'clock the three lines set their course southeast ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... facts. Well, I'll start out from there—when I made the acquaintance of that temporary bank-manager chap. Mind you, I'd about come to the end of my tether at that time as regards money—I'd been pretty well fleeced by one or another, largely through carelessness, largely through sheer ignorance. I didn't lose all my money on the turf, Middlebrook, I can assure you—I was robbed by more than one worthy man of my native town—legally, of course, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher

... Liverpool, Jerome determined to go into the interior and seek for work. He, therefore, called for his bill, and made ready for his departure. Although but four days at the Albion, he found the hotel charges larger than he expected; but a stranger generally counts on being "fleeced" in travelling through the Old World, and especially in Great Britain. After paying his bill, he was about leaving the room, when one of the servants presented himself with ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown

... stuff, I cut it fairly off, and if he likes it he comes or sends and compares the pattern with the whole piece, and probably we come to a bargain. But if I were to buy an hundred sheep, and the grazier should bring me one single weather fat and well fleeced by way of pattern, and expect the same price round for the whole hundred, without suffering me to see them before he was paid, or giving me good security to restore my money for those that were lean or shorn or scabby, I would be none of his customer. I have heard of a man who ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury

... cotton manufactures are strong and inexpensive, and a few of them have the flexibility which denim lacks. It was possessed in an almost perfect degree by the Canton, or fleeced, flannels, manufactured so largely a few years ago, and called art-drapery. It lacked colour, however, for the various dyes given to it during its brief period of favouritism were not colour; they were merely tint. That strong, good word, colour, ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler

... poor. What difference on earth did that make? Had he not money enough for all of them? If not, was there any trouble in adding to their store? Were there not railroads to be wrecked; stockholders to be fleeced; Wall Street lambs to be shorn? Surely a man married to please himself and not to make money. Ed. assured the old man that cases had been known where a suspicion of mercenary motives had hovered round a matrimonial alliance, but Druce expressed ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... bound to misinterpret Nature if we start with the assumption that her methods are at all like our methods. We pick out our favorites among plants and animals, those that best suit our purposes. If we want wool from the sheep, we select the best-fleeced animals to breed from. If we want mutton, we act accordingly. If we want cows for quantity of milk, irrespective of quality, we select with that end in view; if we want butter-fat, we breed for that end, and so on. With our fruits and ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... the man said. "The army will soon be on the march in that direction, and my fate there would be worse than here. Here I am only an innkeeper to be fleeced; there I should be regarded as a heretic to be burnt. Listen to them. They are fighting now. Do you hear my mugs crashing?. I only hope that they will kill each other to the last man. I should advise ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... hardly any impression on his practical feelings and associations, serving to illustrate the distinction between what is merely known to be true and what is felt to be so. The unpopularity of direct taxation, contrasted with the easy manner in which the public consent to let themselves be fleeced in the prices of commodities, has generated in many friends of improvement a directly opposite mode of thinking to the foregoing. They contend that the very reason which makes direct taxation disagreeable makes it preferable. Under it every one knows how much he really pays; and, if he votes for ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... the custom, I knew, for criminals, after they had made a haul to retire into such places as these stuss parlors, not only to spend the proceeds of their robberies, but for protection. Even though they were unmercifully fleeced by the gamblers, they might depend on them to warn of the approach of the "bulls" and if possible count on being hidden ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve

... suppose; and Edmund Grosse says that the boy from the Parsonage has lost any amount to Billy. They have fleeced him ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... see my master's grave. All, far and wide, Was silence; so I bent these knees of mine And wept and poured drink-offerings from the wine I bear the strangers, and about the stone Laid myrtle sprays. And, child, I saw thereon Just at the censer slain, a fleeced ewe, Deep black, in sacrifice: the blood was new About it: and a tress of bright brown hair Shorn as in mourning, close. Long stood I there And wondered, of all men what man had gone In mourning to ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides

... The whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, but the Kanaka is fleeced and trodden down. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... and a thoughtless inclination for extravagance; for such were the gentle terms in which habits of seduction and an unscrupulous profligacy in the expenditure of money were clothed by those who at once fleeced and despised him, but who were numerous enough to impress those opinions upon a great number of the people. In turning over matters as they stood between them, he could trace Burke's enemity to no adequate cause; nor ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... Priam, "fortunate in ruling over so mighty a host! But who is this other chief, less in height than Agamemnon, though broader in the shoulders? His arms lie on the ground, while he himself moves from rank to rank like a thick-fleeced ram which wanders through a great flock ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke

... in full through our friend des Lupeaulx.) Well fleeced as d'Aldrigger had been, he still possessed an income of forty-four thousand francs; but his mortification was further complicated by the spleen which lies in wait for the business man so soon as he retires from business. He ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... with a good deal of the Spaniard in them," explained Miss Morley. "We must make certain allowances for their southern temperaments and customs. They're very poor, and they look upon American and British tourists as made of money, and therefore fair game to be fleeced. The best plan is to take them quite calmly, and never lose your temper however excited they may get. When you've lived here for a time you learn how to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil

... which I never witted until, coming upon deck, I rubbed my eyes to find no sight of land, but the sea all around us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a game of chequers: and ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... pins, needles, buttons, and tape. They proclaim loudly the character and price of their articles, the latter, of course, subject to negotiation. The same custom prevails as in Turkey, of demanding much more than the seller expects to get. Foreigners are generally fleeced a little in the beginning, tho much less so, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various

... adorns a man is that which comes without his demanding it. How often have the servants of the meek and lowly Jesus turned the world away from Him by their examples of vanity, greed, lust for power, their pomp and pride of self-glory. They who were sent to be the shepherds of men have fleeced the flock for their own adorning and then fought amongst themselves to see who should wear the choicest robes. History has shown that they were wrong and their Master was right. The greater their greedy ambition the greater their shame; the higher the place they ...
— Levels of Living - Essays on Everyday Ideals • Henry Frederick Cope

... any force of argument. He resolved, therefore, to set his attorney to work, who, as he understood all the quirks and intricacy of the law, might be able to puzzle her into compliance. This gentleman, however, who possessed at once a rapacious heart and a stupid head, might have fleeced half the country had the one been upon a par with the other. He was, besides, in his own estimation, a lady-killer, and knew not how these interviews with the fair Cooleen Bawn might end. He, at all events, was a sound Protestant, and if it were often said that you might as well ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... from the pinnacle of a bedpost, urged him in excited, confidential tones to take time by the forelock and prepare for possible breach of promise suits. Brewster sat on the edge of the bed and listened to diabolical stories of how conscienceless females had fleeced innocent and even godly men of wealth. From the bathroom, between splashes, he retained Harrison by the year, month, day and hour, to ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... abstract right to that pig, as theirs; The law supposing that such heirs male Are already seized of the pig, in tail. No, not for himself hath Birmingham's priest His "well-beloved" of their pennies fleeced: But it is that, before his prescient eyes, All future Vicars of Birmingham rise, With their embryo daughters, nephews, nieces, And 'tis for them the poor he fleeces. He heareth their voices, ages hence Saying, "Take the pig"—"oh take the pence;" The cries of little Vicarial dears, The ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... so, for a very good reason, as I tell you. But I'm sorry for him. I do believe he can't see that he's being fleeced. He made me promise not to utter a word of it to the Doctor, so I really don't ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... injured, instead of being improved; where there were only four gaming establishments, there would be fifty; instead of being open and public, they would be hid away in private, dark places, to which the young and the innocent would be decoyed and fleeced; merchants could not supervise the conduct of their clerks—these would be robbed by their employes. As the thing stood now, cheating operated a forfeiture of charter or license: this penalty removed, cheating would be universal. "What would become of the hospital?" the tax-payer asked. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... to having made a profit of ten clear pounds in a single week out of the bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some cases when they asked for bread our men got a bullet. Around many a farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of being fleeced. ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... in telling the truth to one's own country: Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a people who, with the great words 'liberty' and 'fraternity' in its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which none would seek to imitate. This is what Germany ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon

... Charley Fox," Lord Upperton continued, "who goes in rather strong. He makes grand speeches in the Commons; but almost always gets fleeced at Almack's. The Jews, who are usually on hand in one of the outside rooms with their shekels, waiting to lend money, charge exorbitant interest. Charley calls it the Jerusalem Chamber. Sometimes he gets completely ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... solemn light. Above these, in the pale tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across them like a thin dusky veil. To the right a bank of dun cloud began to burn crimson, and to burn brighter till it was like a low hill-side full of gorgeous rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish growth of autumnal shrubs. The whole eastern heaven softened and flushed through diaphanous mists; the west remained a livid mystery. The eastern masses and flakes of cloud began ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... chintz coverlets left nothing to be desired. Nor does this enumeration exhaust the comforts and adornments of which the establishment could boast. Feathers, a rare article in Majorca, had been got from a French lady to make pillows for Chopin; Valenciennes matting and long-fleeced sheep skins covered the dusty floor; a large tartan shawl did duty as an alcove curtain; a stove of somewhat eccentric habits, and consisting simply of an iron cylinder with a pipe that passed through the window, had been manufactured for them at Palma; a charming clay vase surrounded with a garland ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... greatest swindlers of this age have been extremely pious? What do you make of Messrs Hobbs and Wright? What do you think of Jabez Balfour? Are not such scoundrels a thousand times worse than a passionate boy like George Mason? Were not the "Liberator" victims fleeced and ruined by professed Christians? What have you to say about Mr. Hastings, Captain Verney, and Mr. De Cobain, who were all convicted of bad crimes and expelled from Parliament? Have you ever heard of the text, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... clothes," Meinik said. "I have never had such good ones on before. I have had money enough to buy them; but people would have asked where I got it from, and it never does to make a show of being better off than one's neighbour. A man is sure to be fleeced, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... of souls and true Christian morality made him the ally of all those who were alarmed at the vast export of money to Rome, about which he had already said in his theses that the Christian sheep were being regularly fleeced. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin

... mode of raising cash seem strange, Although he fleeced the flags of every nation, For into a prime minister but change His title, and 't is nothing but taxation; But he, more modest, took an humbler range Of life, and in an honester vocation Pursued o'er the ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... works well, I don't grudge ye the money 'Squire, and any time I have somethin' more in the law business I'll throw it your way, for I think you a squarer sort of a chap than them ere gang further up the street. I tell you they're sharpers, they fleeced dad last summer and I wasn't agoin' to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur, without ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... White's were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn's Letters we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times—lost 200,000l. at play. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Yorkshire school, where boys were taken-in and done-for by Mr. Squeers, an arrogant, conceited, puffing, overbearing and ignorant schoolmaster, who fleeced, beat, and starved the boys, but taught them nothing.—C. Dickens, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... "And you fleeced them? No?" muttered Don Ignacio, with an envious glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to rob the ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... silent by a disturbing sense of embarrassment. That it should have been Jerry's father whom their Uncle Peter had "fleeced"—the horrible word which had slipped reminiscently from Mrs. Travis' lips burned in their ears! But a sudden delight finally broke loose ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott

... above their mouldering towns, In sullen pomp the tall cathedral frowns, Pride in its aisles and paupers at the door, Which feeds the beggars whom it fleeced of yore. Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw Their slender shadows on the paths below; Scarce steal the winds, that sweep his woodland tracks, The larch's perfume from the settler's axe, Ere, like ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... summer in the open, Borrow, who was now twenty-two, relapsed into the indifferent versification of Danish ballads and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure journeyings in Southern Europe, and so gained some experience for future use, vainly sought a post, on the strength of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum Library, and was reduced to writing ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe

... adventure profoundly a secret, because he would risk the top of his head on his return to Constantinople if it were known that he had associated with Christian women. It is to be feared that the young man will get safely out of France. Madame de Polignac has fleeced all the young men of quality here. I do not know how her relations and those of her husband choose to suffer her to lead so libertine a life. But all shame is extinct in France, and ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans

... in night abyssed, Far and more far the waves' receding shocks, Nor doubts, through all the darkness and the mist That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, And shoreward lead once more her foam-fleeced flocks. ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... street cars in the crowded districts of our great cities and note the churlish discourtesy and sarcastic contempt with which "the foreigners" are generally treated, or will take the pains to ascertain how cruelly they are deceived and fleeced at almost every turn, one will soon conclude that we are making it very hard for these people and their children to become grateful and ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... passing a flock of she-goats, all ready to be milked, each with a bell tinkling about her neck. The goat-herd kept summoning his customers with a long musical whistle. Mallard leaned over and watched the clean-fleeced, slender, graceful animals with a smile of pleasure. Then he amused himself with something that was going on in the house opposite. A woman came out on to a balcony high up, bent over it, and called, "Annina! Annina!" until the call brought ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... going down with the Sun into the bosom of the waters. And these tutelary Divinities of mariners, the Dioscuri or Chief Cabiri of Samothrace, sailed with Jason to possess themselves of the golden-fleeced ram, or Aries, whose rising in the morning announced the Sun's entry into Taurus, when the Serpent-bearer Jason rose in the evening, and, in aspect with the Dioscuri, was deemed their brother. And Orion, son of Neptune, and most ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... from his will, Offa depriued him of all his possessions & reuenues that he held or inioied within anie part of his dominions. Neither was Offa satisfied herewith, but he also tooke into his hands the possessions of manie other churches, and fleeced the house of [Sidenote: Offa alieth himselfe with other princes.] Malmesburie of a part of hir reuenues. Because of these & other his hard dooings, doubting the malice of his enimies, he procured the friendship of forren princes. Vnto Brightricke king of the [Sidenote: Matt. Westm.] Westsaxons ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed

... are plenty rich and silly women in Glasgow who are systematically fleeced by the undeserving poor—people who have no earthly business to be poor, who have hands and heads which can give them a competence, only they are moral idiots. No woman should be allowed full use of large sums of money. She is so soft-hearted, she ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... the unprofitable client, he set-off being gulled on one side his ledger against being fleeced ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... at the note, and the air began With his language to pen and ink; [26] For the mug I'd fleeced had been his head man, [27] And had done him for lots of chink. [28] I'm blessed if my luck doesn't hum and ha, For I argued the point with skill; But the once a week made me go ta-ta [29] For a month on the can't ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... under the land presently, and passed near the northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The sun, at last, was really setting. There was the old magnificence of the king of day,—airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with scarlets and crimsons, and striped with living gold. A blaze ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... that car, and you're on the property of the United States Railroad Administration. I'm a lawyer and I'm telling you that. It's you that happens to be here, not these boys. Here's a crowd of people being fleeced—eating sandwiches that aren't fit to throw to a dog and drinking red lemonade that would die of shock if it saw a lemon. Twenty cents for a cup of coffee that they ought to pay me a dollar for drinking! Now you boys just climb aboard and let's see what you can do. You've got the American ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr. Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified than it was whilst he practised as ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... but their indignation Will fade, and they will feed the Official Ghoul Until the next Quinquennial Valuation. And then—well, Lord knows what may happen then, Unless—unless—and that is most improbable— Ratepayers rise together—show they're men, And not mere sheep gregarious, warm-fleeced, robbable. Meanwhile the Vestry Vultures gorge their fill, And I am warned—by friends—"Don't put their backs up!" Their backs! And we sing "Rule Britannia" still!! Will no one chaw these fine official ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various

... are only as good as the people in control of them. Many a sure thing has been lost to the original investors by stupid decisions leading to bankruptcy, and many a seemingly sure thing has fleeced a ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham

... late mistress," said Geoffery Martin in explanation; "she had ventured out of the town with her new maid, and so I fleeced them royally. I did not leave them a stiver; moreover ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng

... tried to skin a flint as obtain anything from me, and I told them so, for Sumunter had fleeced me of all my effects. This parley concluded, we travelled on without any further molestation, and, crossing over the foot of some low spurs, arrived at noon in a broad watercourse on the maritime plain to eat ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... in their own hands, but in the pockets of a few millionaires who, bewildered by their luck, and unspeakably incapable of making any truly economic use of it, endeavor to "do good" with it by letting themselves be fleeced by philanthropic committee men, building contractors, librarians and professors, in the name of education, science, art and what not; so that sensible people exhale relievedly when the pious millionaire dies, and his heirs, ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

... was run by the most unprincipled scoundrel I have ever met. He was a civilian speculator who saw the chance to fatten on the British prisoners. He fleeced us in two ways. Not only were his prices extortionate, but he gave a ridiculous exchange for British currency, especially gold. After considerable persuasion and deliberation he would change a half sovereign for 7-1/2 marks—7s. 6d. We complained but could ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, 500 Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep, His waters on the plain: and crested heads Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, And ...
— The Witch of Atlas • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... the shore of the briny sea by Geraestus foaming with its white billows. Whence the baleful curse came on my house since, by the agency of Maia's son,[30] there appeared the pernicious, pernicious prodigy of the golden-fleeced lamb, a birth which took place among the flocks of the warlike Atreus. On which both Discord drove back the winged chariot of the sun, directing it from the path of heaven leading to the west toward Aurora borne on her single horse.[31] And Jupiter drove back the course of the ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... be characterized as a traitor at the club and in the newspapers, to be designated by name as an object of popular suspicion and fury, to be hooted at in the streets and in the theater, to submit to the disobedience of his men, to be denounced, insulted, arrested, fleeced, hunted down and slaughtered by them and by the populace, to see before him a cruel, ignoble, and unavenged death—that of M. de Launay, murdered at Paris—that of M. de Belzunce, murdered at Caen—that ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... might need them, under the name of Free Companies, and when unemployed lived by plunder. The peace had only let these wretches loose on the peasants. Some had seized castles, whence they could plunder travellers; others roamed the country, preying on the miserable peasants, who, fleeced as they were by king, barons, and clergy, were tortured and murdered by these ruffians, so that many lived in holes in the ground that their dwellings might not attract attention. Bertrand du Guesclin ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... greatest part of the property, and that she expected her liberation in a few days, having been prodigal of bribes to the 'justicia.' In effect, her liberation took place sooner than my own. Nevertheless, she had little cause to triumph, as before she left the prison she had been fleeced of the last cuarto of her ill- gotten gain, by alguazils and escribanos, who, she admitted, understood hokkano ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow

... in the way of business. For they are enemies whatever way you take them; come to be done by the husband or to do him—in either case, therefore, the object of a sharp curiosity. You may call on an educated man, either to fleece him or be fleeced, and his wife, though she knows all about it, will talk to you charmingly of trifles while you wait for him in her parlour. But a wife of the lower orders, active in her husband's affairs, has not been trained to dissemble so prettily; though her ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... youth. I should have been shutting it on Wallie Hine, too. No, the only plan was to welcome them all, to play Parminter's game of showing the youth about town, and Barstow's game of crude flattery, and gradually, if possible, to dissociate him from his companions, before they had fleeced him altogether. So you were let in, my dear, for that unfortunate evening. Of course I was quite sure that you would not attribute to me designs upon Wallie Hine, otherwise I should have turned them all ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... American watches, until this villain came across his path once more. I did my best, but the best was little enough. The next thing I heard there had been a scandal at one of the Northumberland Avenue hotels: a traveller had been fleeced of a large sum by two confederate card-sharpers, and the matter was in the hands of Scotland Yard. The first I learned of it was in the evening paper, and I was at once certain that my brother ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Bartley, her husband, was the greatest rogue on the river; he was up to everything, and stood at nothing. He fleeced as much on the water as she did on the land; for I often seed her give wrong change afterwards when people were tipsy, but I made it a rule always to walk away. As for Bartley, his was always night-work, and many's ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the interloper with the same glance of refined surprise that the master might have employed when a fleeced plebeian entered his office, demanding to know why the market had slumped in direct contradiction to confidential prophecy. He elevated his patrician brows, but ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple

... asleep, Lucian being so feeble and Julian so full. The office was open but empty. Its clock read two. The card-tables were vacant. The bar was closed. Out on the dim boiler deck he found only the two who had fleeced Basile. They sat at the very front, elbow to elbow, with their feet up on the rail. Their quiet talk ceased as he came near and stood looking out over the gliding bow and the waters beyond, which were out of their banks ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this difference—that la Fontaine's cat at last showed that he knew himself to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced, still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... some with five-card insomnia—and right off, when you first came, you had it fair shoved on you by people usually most disobligin'. It wasn't just for your money; there was plenty could stack 'em higher than you could, and them fairly achin' to be fleeced, at that. If your head hadn't been attached to your shoulders good and strong, if you hadn't figured to be about square, or maybe rectangular, you had a chance to be a poker ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... last cannot be diminished without the first being diminished also. If, now, we consider all that this extravagance entails—if we count up the robbed tradesmen, the stinted governesses, the ill-educated children, the fleeced relatives, who have to suffer from it—if we mark the anxiety and the many moral delinquencies which its perpetrators involve themselves in; we shall see that this regard for conventions is not quite so ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer

... did not listen to him, and thought, "You have fleeced people often enough, now the thorn-bushes shall do the same to you;" and he began to play over again, so that the Jew had to jump higher than ever, and scraps of his coat were left hanging on the thorns. ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... come again and say, "Give me another tenner, and I'll be obliged." Then you find out if my hide isn't all gone, and if I can be skinned again you give me Anisya's money. But supposing I'm clean shorn,—have nothing to eat,—then you see I can't be fleeced any more, and you say, "Go your way, friend," and you look out for another, and lend him your own and Anisya's money and skin him. That's what the bank is. So it goes round and round. It's a ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... begin," muttered the novelist whose puppets' speeches had always been so apt. "Last night you sent me on a sort of—quest for the golden fleece. I didn't know who had been fleeced, or what the idea was. But I fared forth, as they say. ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... exhilarating influence grew wittier and wittier, and kept the Alderman in such roars of laughter that he could scarcely swallow his oysters. At length Franklin told a story of a man by the name of Maroney, who had come to the city, and getting into rather questionable company, had been fleeced of quite a large amount of money. He had sought Franklin's aid in ferreting out the thieves, but finding it would be necessary to disclose his name and the circumstances in which he was robbed, and that the facts would find ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... nor urge me, friend, to hasten To your "cloudless alien climes," Hungering for my Fleece like Jason— I've been fleeced there ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various

... (The Pyrenees begin to flatten, A feast denied to storm and shower, The pen's the wonder-working power); Or Smith, the master of "Addresses," Carves history out in modern messes:— Tells how gay Charles cook'd up his collops, How fleeced his friends, how paid his trollops— How pledged his soul, and pawn'd his oath, 'Till none would give a straw for both; And touching paupers for the Evil, Touch'd England half way to the devil Or Hook, picks up my favorite hits, For when was friendship between wits? ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... that we must!" He did not see young Jacob's irrepressible smile at this singular extension of metaphor. "He mustn't be allowed to sell that house in open market—never, sir! Confound it, I'll buy it myself before I'll see him fleeced!" ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner

... sufficiently liberal if dealing with other than the "measureless liars" of the League; it is far, however, from the whole sum which will be charged upon, and proved against them, on occasion hereafter when the general question shall be progressed with. The rogues that fleeced the simple stripling, Lord Huntingtower, out of 95 per cent for his bills, were not, as shall be proved, more unscrupulous cheats and abusers of individual, than the League are of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... after a voyage of ten thousand miles and an absence of two years, laden with spoils and captives. How hapless was the fate of the poor Dyak! If he stayed at home, cultivating his fields, his Malay lord fleeced him to the skin. If, thinking to engage in gainful traffic, he hugged the shore with his little bark, the river-pirate snatched him up. If he stood out upon the broad waters, he could scarcely hope to escape the Northern hordes who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... see much of it in a neighborhood where low rents attracted the poorly paid worker and many newly arrived immigrants who were first employed in gangs upon railroad extensions and similar undertakings. The sturdy peasants eager for work were either the victims of the padrone who fleeced them unmercifully, both in securing a place to work and then in supplying them with food, or they became the mere sport of unscrupulous employment agencies. Hull-House made an investigation both of the padrone and of the agencies in our immediate vicinity, and ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... before the money I got for it was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely. I went to London and tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery. Her tears ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... amain at the unhappy Calandrino and would have laughed yet more, but that it irked them to see him fleeced of the capons, to boot, by those who had already robbed him of the pig. But, as soon as the end of the story was come, the queen charged Pampinea tell hers, and she promptly began thus: "It chanceth oft, dearest ladies, that craft is put to scorn by craft and it is therefore a sign of little ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... ruled over all Helgeland in those days was an unjust man who laid heavy taxes upon the people, taking double weight and tale both of fish and of eider-down, nor was he less grasping with the tithes and grain dues. Wherever his fellows came they fleeced and flayed. No sooner, then, did the rumour of the new boats reach him than he sent his people out to see what truth was in it, for he himself used to go fishing in the fishing grounds with large crews. When thus his fellows came ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... these signs Alleyne knew that he was on the very fringe of the forest, and therefore no great way from Christchurch. The sun was lying low in the west and shooting its level rays across the long sweep of rich green country, glinting on the white-fleeced sheep and throwing long shadows from the red kine who waded knee-deep in the juicy clover. Right glad was the traveller to see the high tower of Christchurch Priory gleaming in the mellow evening light, and gladder still ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle

... The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks: The swift stag from under ground Bore up his branching head: Scarce from his mould Behemoth biggest born of earth upheaved His vastness: Fleeced the flocks and bleating rose, As plants: Ambiguous between sea and land The river-horse, and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, Insect or worm: those waved their limber fans For wings, and smallest lineaments exact ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... whereas the flower of thy youth is but just burgeoning; thou art able to take away the sin that maketh the powers beneath the earth wroth with us: for Phrixos biddeth us lay his ghost, and that we go to the house of Aietes, and bring thence the thick-fleeced hide of the ram, whereby of old he was delivered from the deep and from the impious weapons of his stepmother. This message cometh to me in the voice of a strange dream: also I have sent to ask of the oracle at Kastalia whether it be worth the quest, and the oracle chargeth me straightway ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar

... mere boys—got into mischief, they got into debt with the Jews; for there were Jews at Cambridge, not a few; they were preyed upon by sharpers, were fleeced on the right hand and on the left; many of them learned more harm than good. The elder men, and they who had consciences and hearts, shook their heads, and asked what could be done? For a long time the principle of laissez faire prevailed: ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... placed the bloom of manhood on Your youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece was none Your fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of new Knowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat; I put my strength upon you, and I threw ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... treatment, remained four years in these two provinces, of which he grew as weary as was Mademoiselle at his absence. She cried out in anger against Madame de Montespan and her son; complained loudly that after having been so pitilessly fleeced, Lauzun was still kept removed from her; and made such a stir that at last she obtained permission for him to return to Paris, with entire liberty; on condition, however, that he did not approach within two leagues of any place where the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... it, and went where the casements, larger and freer than the branch-screened lattice of his own apartment, admitted unimpeded the dark-blue, the silver-fleeced, the stirring and sweeping vision of the autumn night-sky. He carried no candle; unneeded was lamp or fire. The broad and clear though cloud-crossed and fluctuating beam of the moon shone ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... I would lose nothing if you should be fleeced. And as to calling her Sonka—everybody knows that is her name. So does everybody know that she likes to rake up the ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

... old stone bridge to-morrow at three, and I will convince you of the actuality of this wonderful inheritance—this inheritance which you so long have been deprived of—which you have been fleeced out of by my ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... it was every man for himself, in the chase of the happiness which this powerful vote had in keeping. He was robbed by the padrone—that is, the boss—when he came over, fleeced on his steamship fare, made to pay for getting a job, and charged three prices for board and lodging and extras while working in the railroad gang. The boss had a monopoly, and Pietro was told that it was maintained by his "divvying" with some railroad ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... seem to decay: simplicity, sincerity, kindness, don't really go out, any more than the other things, and fortunately the other things are confined only to a small group in every civilization, to the black sheep of the great, whity-brown or golden-fleeced ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced. ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... all we have done for the last twenty-five years. You see how proud they are; though many of them lived in the greatest misery on the other side of the Rhine, yet they think they are of a different race from ours—a superior race; they believe the people are always ready to let themselves be fleeced as they were before '89. They say Louis XVIII. has good sense; so much the better for him, for if he is unfortunate enough to listen to these people, if they imagine even that he can act upon their advice, all is lost. There will be civil war. The people have thought, ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann

... masses of piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and smoke—fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... 1871.—Passed a very crowded population, the men calling to us to land to be fleeced and insulted by way of Mahonga or Mutuari: they threw stones in rage, and one, apparently slung, lighted close to the canoe. We came on until after dark, and landed under a cliff to rest and cook, but a crowd came and made inquiries, then a few more came as ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... pockets of individuals rather than the treasury of the state. In Spain itself, the greater part of the land was owned by the ecclesiastical corporations and the nobles, who were exempt from taxation but were intermittently fleeced. Moreover, the 10 per cent tax on all sales—the alcabala [Footnote: See above, p. 57.]—gradually paralyzed all native industrial enterprise. And the persecution of wealthy and industrious Jews and Moors diminished the resources of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... produced a black dress from a grass bag, which was carried by an attendant. This dress was very curious. It fastened in front with buttons of horn, and either was, or seemed to be, woven in a single piece from the softest hair of black-fleeced goats. Moreover, it had sleeves just long enough to leave the hands of the wearer visible, and beneath its peaked cap was a sort of mask with three slits, two for the eyes and one ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... men desire caresses and kisses, a girl should send a message to her Solar Plexus—her reflex nerve—to help her to say, "No." She should let no present tempt her to be fleeced ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley

... range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities. So might a robber, who has just fleeced a traveler, say to him: "What are you staying for? Get along! I have no ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... as soon as you can for your poor friend. I also expect my travelling route from you. Things have become quite too bad here, and I am fleeced worse than ever. If I do not go at all, lo! and behold a crimen laesae!... As it seems that you wish soon to have a dedication from me, I gladly comply with your request, much more so than with that ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... No; he was so wonderfully concientious, and so zealously punctual in fulfilling my wishes, as he told them on the subject, that nothing would pass in payment but gold. This gold, sir, they were compelled to receive from himself, at a most oppressive premium; so that he actually fleeced them under my name, in every conceivable manner and form of villainy. He is a usurer, too; and, I am told, worth forty or fifty thousand pounds: but, thank heaven! he is no ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton

... Many a fallen convent reverend in decay, And many a time have trod the castle courts And grass-green halls, yet never did they strike Home to the heart such melancholy thoughts As this poor cottage. Look, its little hatch Fleeced with that grey and wintry moss; the roof Part mouldered in, the rest o'ergrown with weeds, House-leek and long thin grass and greener moss; So Nature wars with all the works of man. And, like himself, reduces back to earth ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey

... to success. This was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to have become an immortal fact in history. The instance of Verres will be narrated in the next chapter but one. Something of moderation was more general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Proconsul might rob a great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his goodness before the citizens at home. But Cicero robbed not at all. ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope

... expenses. When he sold his claims, he let them go easily, loath to bother himself with business details, eager to get away from the fuss and nuisance. The few hundred dollars he received he probably sunk in unproductive mining work, or was fleeced out of in the towns. Then joyfully he turned back to his beloved mountains and the life of his slow deep delight and his pecking away before the open doors of fortune. By and by he would build himself a little ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... heart ran back to the home life she was exiled from. She was thinking of the village. It was prayer-meeting night, and the moon would wait outside the church like Mary's white-fleeced lamb till the service was over, and then it would follow the couples home, gamboling after them when they walked, and, when ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... the city helped to waft his soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And, though the rabble—the political opponents of the son, that is—recalled those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe and sane people—people who had something in this world to lose—mourned the death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez



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