"Swindle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do with a fool? . . . 'That's one of your little jokes, Chester,' he says. . . . Joke! I could have wept. Ask Captain Robinson here. . . . And there was another shipowning fellow—a fat chap in a white waistcoat in Wellington, who seemed to think I was up to some swindle or other. 'I don't know what sort of fool you're looking for,' he says, 'but I am busy just now. Good morning.' I longed to take him in my two hands and smash him through the window of his own office. But I didn't. I was as mild as a curate. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... judgment was reversed was not even remotely connected with the main enquiry, whether or not the charge of conspiracy was sustainable in point of constitutional law. During the progress of the trial, a fraud, a swindle, a petty theft, was perpetrated by the officers of government, which more than one man, high in office, had a hand in suborning. This fact had supreme influence on the decision of the House of Lords. But the plain truth ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... all over the world, make twenty thousand francs per annum by charges for postage alone; accounts of expenses of protest pay for Mme. la Baronne de Nucingen's dresses, opera box, and carriage. The charge for postage is a more shocking swindle, because a house will settle ten matters of business in as many lines of a single letter. And of the tithe wrung from misfortune, the Government, strange to say! takes its share, and the national revenue is swelled by a tax on commercial failure. And the Bank? from the august ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... one way or another, but that somehow he threatened to rob the situation of whatever dignity it may have had as a stroke of fate, as a call on courage. Mr. d'Alcacer, acutely observant and alert for the slightest hints, preferred to look upon himself as the victim not of a swindle but of a rough man naively engaged in a contest with heaven's injustice. D'Alcacer did not examine his heart, but some lines of a French poet came into his mind, to the effect that in all times ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... 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
... 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
... you don't play any of your games on me, young man. I've cut my eye-teeth, I have. You don't swindle me out of a fifty-cent breakfast quite so easily. Here, John, call ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... nervousness Ford 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 ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... King Ferdinand, as he washed his hands, "do people anywhere wrap ordinary feathers in red silk? You squinting rascal, do not think to swindle me out of eternal bliss by any such foolish talk! I perfectly recognize that feather as the feather which Milcah plucked from the left pinion of the Archangel Oriphiel when the sons of God were on more intricate and scandalous terms ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... 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 their secret ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... screamed Mr. Gladman, suddenly changing his tone. "You think the law is going to allow you to swindle honest men! You think we are going to sit still for you to rob us! That will—" Mr. Gladman pointed a lank forefinger dramatically ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... heard 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
... '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 up for ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it out. But you—you say there are other things in life besides suffering. How did you know that if—if you've never had ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... Allworth, out of respect and gratitude to his father, to give him countenance. This induces Sir Giles to suppose that his nephew is about to marry the wealthy dowager. Feeling convinced that he will then be able to swindle him out of all the dowager's property, as he had ousted him out of his paternal estates, Sir Giles pays his nephew's debts, and supplies him liberally with ready money, to bring about the marriage as soon as possible. Having paid Wellborn's debts, the overreaching ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... all with Domingo?" cried several people; and, loud above all the others, Kami-Bey bawled out: "To say nothing of the fact that the sale of your racing stud was a complete swindle!" ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... "A swindle!" he thought. Then a spark of recklessness glowed out of the vanishing fumes of alcohol. ...
— Pygmalion's Spectacles • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... 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. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... that's not in the party at all. An American gent,' I says. They wouldn't believe it at first, but, when Keggs 'ad put two and two together, and thought of one or two things that 'ad 'appened, 'e turned as white as a sheet and said it was a swindle and wanted the drawin' done over again, but the others says 'No', they says, 'it's quite fair,' they says, and one of 'em offered me ten bob slap out for my ticket. But I stuck to it, I did. And that," concluded Albert throwing ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... that," 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 most by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Maitland's expression was blank for a moment; then comprehension informed his eyes. "Oh, yes; in connection with the Dougherty investment swindle." ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... 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
... have a picture of injured innocence in the shape of pale despairing mothers and clamoring children, and on the other, villainy triumphant in the form of a police constable or a government official. And to think that you should have been taken in by such a swindle!" ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he owed to the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... trusted, rather than the baseless trash of 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 us ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... are after 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
... Wagner to go back to Germany it is just possible Wagner might have gone. Instead, Meyerbeer sent him into a cul de sac—to starve, or get out as he best could. In the whole history of the art of the world no more cruel swindle was ever played on an obscure artist by a man ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... the divil's bargain in you; and for the like of that you're not bad matched. Tell him from me, Larry Macdermot—tell him from me, that I'm not so owld yet, nor so poor, nor so silly, that he can swindle me out of my lands and house that way. So clever as you think yourself, Mr. Keegan, you may walk back to Carrick again, and don't think to call yourself masther ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... friend, the 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 horses and mules ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... 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 such ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... consented to swindle, he had to outvie every lie by a new and bigger one. Mr. Douglas might be as patient as he liked; the abuse which was made of his name at last became too much ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... been in the king's power to double its mass, the exchangeable value of gold and silver would have decreased one-half immediately, always on account of this proportionality and equilibrium. The adulteration of the coin was, then, on the part of the king, a forced loan, or rather, a bankruptcy, a swindle. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... numbers are invariably wrong. About an hour or so after the drawings are received in New York, a printed slip is sent to every office, and then all claims are promptly settled. The managers, being in an unlawful business in this State, have the opportunity to swindle as they please. The players have no redress. Ten thousand dollar 'hits' have been made, according to tradition, and 'hits' of from $500 to $1,500 are known of sometimes. Three-number lottery tickets are sold on every drawing, and constitute a very lucrative ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... support. And those help wanted advertisements were simply appeals for more girls of that sort—for cheaper girls; or they were inserted by employment agencies, masquerading in the newspaper as employers and lying in wait to swindle working girls by getting a fee in exchange for a false promise of good work at high wages; or they were the nets flung out by crafty employers who speeded and starved their slaves, and wished to recruit fresh relays to replace those that had quit ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... to the parting of the ways. He realized that he was rushing on political destruction, and that, if he supported the vulgar swindle perpetrated at Lecompton, he would be repudiated by the great State which had exalted him and almost idolized him as a political leader. He determined, therefore, to take a bold stand against the administration on this issue. It ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the former. Donnelly had his "ordhers," as Mrs. Mac said. The sergeant was to be accorded all respect and credit, and a hack to fetch him home when his legs got as twisted as his tongue: Mrs. McGrath would be around within forty-eight hours to audit and pay the accounts. Donnelly sought to swindle the shrewd old laundress at the start, and thereby lost Mac's valuable custom for six long and anniversary-laden months. Then he came to terms, and didn't try it again for nearly two years, which was remarkable in a saloon-man. ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... necessarily invites a violent reaction against the cause 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 destroy the instruments upon ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... sat, 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 a dream?" ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... become of him now but for the half-crown the lady had given him! She was not quite a lady, or she would have walked out of the shop, and declined to gain by frustrating a swindle; but she was a good-hearted woman, and God's messenger to Clare. He bought a bigger loaf than usual, at which, and the time of the day when he bought it, and the half-crown presented in payment, Mr. Ball wondered; but neither said anything—Mr. Ball ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... the 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 his fingers scornfully, and held aloof; but this was simply ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... that the man who had sold the land to Ole Bull had no claim to it whatever, and had perpetrated a barefaced swindle, and now, having the money, he dared his victim to do his worst. The actual owner of the land, who had come forward to assert his rights, became interested in the scheme, and was willing to sell the land at a low price, but Ole now had no money. He instituted legal ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... an English railway once overcharged him a shilling for fare. He promptly complained to the directors, and had the man discharged. "Not," said he, "that I could not afford to pay the shilling, but the man was cheating many travelers to whom the swindle would be offensive." ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... she complained, and told of this abominable swindle; Derues had been beforehand with her, and the slander he had disseminated bore its fruits. It was said that his old mistress was endeavouring by an odious falsehood to destroy the reputation of a man who ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nothing of the number of the passengers and the room in the ship's boats, though the frightful consideration the contrast presented must have been in more minds than mine. I speak only of the taking people for whom there is no sort of accommodation as the most decided swindle, and the coolest, I ever did with my ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... captain, who takes his share of all they get, except of what they earn by fortune-telling. They are very clever at making a good bargain; when they know of a rich merchant being in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communications with him, and swindle him, ... after which they change their clothes, have their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft material lest they should ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... 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 ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... boys again brought the rascally Crabtree to terms. Then the lads became the possessors of a biplane, and took several thrilling trips through the air. About this time, Mr. Anderson Rover, who was not in the best of health, was having much trouble with some brokers, who were trying to swindle him out of valuable property. He went to New York City, and disappeared, and his three sons went at once on the hunt for him. The brokers were Pelter, Japson & Company, and it was not long before Dick and his brothers discovered that Pelter and Japson were in league with Josiah Crabtree. ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... spread the news as he went. Arrived in London soon after daybreak, he went to Cochrane's house, and there changed his uniform. When the Stock Exchange opened at ten on February 21, 1814, the Funds rose rapidly, and among those who sold on the rise was Cochrane. The next day, when the swindle had been discovered, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... to recount all the varied incidents of the next five days which were wasted here, by the thousand and one stories which the Abban produced to fritter away my time near his home, and swindle me out of my property. The time had now arrived when by appointment I should have been at Berbera; and as I was not then aware at what time the fair usually broke up, I felt much afraid of being too late to join my companions. Sometimes Sumunter raised my hopes by saying he would ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... laugh. "I know you would. That's just the damnable part of it. Life is an infernal swindle, isn't it? It's brimful of this sort of thing." He stood up with a jerk, and pulled himself together. "Forgive me, Olga! I didn't mean to let off steam in this way. I'm a selfish hound. Forget it! Only promise ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... been promised by Talleyrand double the amount of the sums which he could swindle from your Government; but though he did more mischief to your country than was expected in this, and though he proved that he had pocketed upwards of ten thousand English guineas, the wages of his infamy, when ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 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
... short nuggety man, and could use his hands, they said; he looked as if he'd be a nasty, vicious, cool customer in a fight—he wasn't the sort of man you'd care to try and swindle a second time. He had a monkey shave when he shaved, but now it was all frill and stubble—like a bush fence round a stubble-field. He had a broken nose, and a cunning, sharp, suspicious eye that squinted, and a cold stony eye that seemed fixed. If you didn't know him ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... you," said Gorman, "the king is pretty well off at present. He got L6,000 three weeks ago out of Bilkins—the man who ran the egg swindle—and until that's spent he won't feel the need of money. If you could wait six weeks—I'm sure he'll be on the rocks again in six weeks—and then offer ...
— Lady Bountiful - 1922 • George A. Birmingham
... that the mine was just as described, only a nasty road would have to be built to it that would probably cost L80,000 or L100,000, and the mill would have to be built. It looks to me like a total loss, Jim; but the swindle is so manifest that I believe we can make the conspirators disgorge at least the last half that ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... complaint?' he asked courteously; and he shot me a glance which I knew meant, 'Let him tell his own story.' And now, being authorized to speak, Farmer Camp began to tell, in his own homely way, the story of the 'greenback swindle,' as he termed it. When he had reached the point in the narrative where I made my unlucky attempt to rout the swindlers, he turned ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... Since I came a cropper over that accursed cotton swindle I've not had any inclination to meet any one I knew—especially any one in the Service, but"—and his voice rang honestly, "I always wondered whether you and I would ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... soon comes to recognise the characteristics in the crimes with which he deals. 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
... had never been near him at all since he had been in Massachusetts. They knew where and how he was from his letter's to his mother; they knew, too, from the same letters—for I had notified Henry—at what time I would be in Boston, and with this information they had come on to swindle me. I have no doubt, when the young man came the second time to rob me, he would have murdered me, if the landlord had not come to my assistance. And this was the youngest son of my first and ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... done. It's jest ruinin' the reputation of this yer camp,—this sloshin' around o' capital on non-residents ez don't claim it!" "It's settin' an example o' extravagance," said another, "ez is little better nor a swindle. Thais mor'n five men in this camp, thet, hearin' thet Hawkins hed sent home eight thousand dollars, must jest rise up and send home their hard earnings too! And then to think thet thet eight thousand was only a bluff, after all, and thet it's lyin' ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... must remember that 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 ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... Allus was a muff and a muddler; middling showy style, and a bit dodgy with his dooks, but neither a slogger nor a stayer, and, atween you and me and the post, allus ready to hist the white feather when 'ard pressed. Wot's that you say? His 'Travelling Company'? A reglar swindle, and a fair frost, Gemmen. Went 'round the country' on false purtences, and never did no good nowheres. Awful poor lot o' Pugs, that gang. Not in it with the ''Atfield Combination Troupe,' as can fight a bit, and 'as some smart scrappers in it. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... bill! He did not fail to present himself next day, accompanied by Mrs. Chevassat. He asked for five hundred and seventy-nine francs. Such a sum for a few second-hand pieces of furniture which adorned that wretched garret! It was a clear swindle, and the impudence so great, that Henrietta was overwhelmed. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... cards when he dealt One evening he was in awful luck, when he happened to go for his cigar-case, which he had left in the hall in his great-coat pocket. He laid down his spectacles on the table, and someone tried them on. As soon as he took up the cards he gave a start, and sang out, 'Here's a swindle! Nous sommes voles!' He could see, by the help of the spectacles, that all the nines and court cards were marked; and the spectacles were regular patent ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... Shrumpf's version of his own swindle, and a tolerably correct account of the events which ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... be annoying. What a beastly swindle the death-duties are! Why, I shall suffer even on your own little estate ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... swindle to go on all that time without saying a word!" said the questioner. "I am surprised, when I remember that for a long time you saw me ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... considered himself in the prime of life and vigor. Hang it! He was sixty-nine. A man was about done for at sixty-nine, all but ready to turn into his grave. And he without son or grandson. Lord! What a swindle life was anyway! ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... had proved to them that the landlords always considered their own interest to the detriment of the peasants. Therefore, if a landlord called them to a meeting and made them some kind of a new offer, it could evidently only be in order to swindle them more ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... was a bad swindle, undoubtedly. A circle with a circumference half that of another must have its area a quarter that of the other. Therefore the two small bundles contained together only half as much asparagus as ...
— Amusements in Mathematics • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... commits a sin. A man knows it is wrong to become intoxicated, and yet he does become so; he has violated a known law of right and wrong, and has therefore committed a sin. Who is the man of common sense that does not know it is wrong to lie, steal, swindle, defraud, curse, drink, get angry and cross; to refuse to help a needy neighbor when he can, to talk foolishly, to tell unseemly tales, to backbite, slander, commit adultery, hold enmity against another, or to be ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... market for ironbark red, It always occurs to the Wollombi head To do a "mahogany" swindle. In forests where never the ironbark grew, When Jim is at work, it would flabbergast you To ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... a rueful smile; "I wrote the cheque last night; by this time it will have been cashed, and so the swindle is complete." ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... father has more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat; and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest, and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own property, and convert its labor ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... know as it's a kitch o' some sort ... —hows'ever, jest this once. (He purchases another packet, and is rewarded by an eyeglass, constructed of cardboard and coloured gelatine, which he flings into the circle in a fury.) 'Tis nobbut a darned swindle—and I've done wi' ye! Ye're all a pack ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... money, and he was determined, to rob me somehow. I let him imagine that he was leading me on, for there is no luxury that I enjoy more than watching a low, cunning rogue when he thinks he is arranging a successful swindle. I was introduced to a thoroughly safe man. The safe man's face was almost as villanous as that of my mentor, and his manners were, perhaps, a little more offensive. Our first bet closed all transactions between us; as I fully expected, I obtained a ridiculously liberal price, and I won. ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... ten minutes he lay somewhat limply in the chair, and his reflections were not pleasant. He had speculated with another man's money and lost most of it, as well as profited by several transactions which were little better than a swindle; but that was as far as he had gone hitherto, and he had in a curious fashion, retained through it all a measure of inherited pride. Now, however, the disguise was for a moment torn aside, and he saw himself as he was, ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... mountain—and just a little further below, it begins picking up from the left hand in little boggy tributaries, and in the inside of a hundred yards has grown a brook again.[30] The general course of the brook was, I guess, S.E.; the valley still very deep and whelmed in wood. It seemed a swindle to have made so sheer a climb and still find yourself at the bottom of a well. But gradually the thing seemed to shallow, the trees to seem poorer and smaller; I could see more and more of the silver sprinkles ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... invulnerable heroes are necessarily the bravest. Talk to them in a business-like manner, and refer your design at once to their lawyer. My friend John Shamberry was a model in this grand stroke of art. He swindled twelve people to the tune of some thousands, with no other trouble than it first cost him to swindle—whom do you think?—the Secretary to the Society for the ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... objection than the first," said Tempest. "I don't see why a fellow should be out of it because he's poor. If so, I can cut my lucky here. But it does seem a swindle to stick a town-boy over all ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Thou Shameless and Unjust; Thou Swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth, august; Come down, thou hoary Blasphemy, For ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the transom was open; I couldn't help it. I'm glad I did hear. I know where you all stand. I'm only a boy, but I'll clean up this capital prize swindle and I'm going after it tonight. 'Watch me,' that's what the boss ordered ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... clergy have been converting another corpse, but this time it has been able to protest by proxy, and the swindle has been exposed all along the line. Paul Bert, the great French Freethinker, died at Tonquin. The nation voted him a state funeral, and his body was shipped to France. The voyage was a long one, and it gave the pious an opportunity ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... embarking with a gang of needy rogues on a first-class "roping" transaction, in connection with a prize-fight in Spain. Having, however, been exposed, he is shunned by most of those who only heard of the swindle when it was too late to join ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... swindle! It's a deliberate swindle!" shrilled Mr Pilkington. The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. "I've been made a fool of! I've been swindled! I've ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... grunts and squeaks. The crowing of cocks, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cows, and the bleating of sheep follow in succession,—sounds so appropriate to the memories of the Bowery that was, that one is tempted to applaud the rascal in spite of the swindle he is practising on the crowd. Of course, with the exception of the bird-songs, none of these sounds are produced by the aid of the calls, but are simply the fruit of long and assiduous practice on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... or my wife, or servant Saurea—do your best, swindle us, rook us, I promise you your interests won't suffer, ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... might as well have done sooner. Having taken other people off, he has taken himself off also, and has contrived to carry some twenty pounds of her ladyship's money with him, which he managed to swindle her out of; and the police are on the look-out for him. I heard that only this ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... swindle me," thought Andy. "It's lucky I didn't pay him five dollars. Anyway, I'll keep it. The pocketbook ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the swale; and listening to the swindle of the flail, as it sounds dub-a-dub on the corn, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... appeal beyond their judgment; because no hungry politician could bring it about that his friends got the chance to swindle the Apaches or to rob them of their rations—as was being done with other Indians all over the West at the time—these two old men were able to enforce their edicts and to keep at peace the most warlike savages in the whole Southwest. They kept the ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... view.' I didn't feel called upon to admire the hall in audible terms; but as I stood there an inspiring scene arose before my mental vision—a scene of up-turned faces, each representing the sum of fifteen cents, that being the regular swindle for getting into shows round here, the landlord said. I struck a bargain for the hall, at once—a bargain by which I was to have it for two dollars if I didn't do very well, or five dollars if I had a regular big crowd; bill-stickers and doorkeeper ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... selected for their religious bias rather than their business qualifications, burst at one fell coup, almost in the very hour of my return home, dissipating into thin air, as the Latin poet has it, all the savings of a lifetime which my mother had invested in the swindle—the provision left behind by my father, when he died, for her use, and the subsequent benefit of my sister and myself. The devout rogue who had "managed" the concern to his own worldly interest ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... followed by an anti-climax of gibes and jeers at his gullibility. Whenever the hoax was spoken of, Judge Harvey writhed with personal humiliation, and with anger against the person who had recalled his discomfiture, and with a desire for vengeance against the perpetrator of the swindle. ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... with a faint smile. She had certainly charm. Admiration and hunger prompted me to further recklessness. I said: "This five-course swindle has left me ravenous, and I am bound for the Avenir myself. May I beg for the rapture ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... 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
... 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 game [U.S.], panel game [U.S.], shell ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... swindle!" burst in Matt Lincoln indignantly. "Don't you pay a cent. Miss Bartlett. It was not your fault, and he ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... as director of that section. He knew more of the criminal undercurrents on the Continent than any living Englishman, and it was he who furnished accurate information to the Surete in Paris concerning the great Humbert swindle. ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... 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 about ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... waste of holy water When we're taken to the font: They that make us pay for burial Swindle us ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... The swindle was now discovered, and the culprit, after the first shock to his feelings had abated, showed me, with evident if subdued satisfaction, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... very successful 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 ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... a very few words, Major," he replied. "It is either a gigantic swindle or it is a clear case of murder. If a swindle, then Ulchester himself is at the bottom of it and it will end in murder just the same. Frankly, the swindle theory strikes me as being the more probable; in other words, that the whole thing is a put-up game between ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... he said to himself. "He means to pocket the contessa's bracelet. What a swindle! I thought there was something more devilish about him than ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... son's suspicions and a can opener | |convinced Andrew Sherrer last Saturday | |that he had been fleeced out of $500 by | |two clever manipulators of an ancient | |"get-something-for-nothing" swindle. So | |strong was the ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... said, by Gall, that we must consider the criminal rather than the crime. The formula does not carry us very far, but the inquiries which have been started look toward an answer of my questions based on science for the first time. If the typical criminal is a degenerate, bound to swindle or to murder by as deep seated an organic necessity as that which makes the rattlesnake bite, it is idle to talk of deterring him by the classical method of imprisonment. He must be got rid of; he cannot be improved, ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... as well tell it now, I suppose," said the old gentleman; "but it is a great shame about that paper! to advertise that morning papers are to be obtained—it's a swindle, Jasper! a complete swindle!" and the old gentleman looked so very irate that the boy exerted ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he replied, testily; "there's ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... furious now, but the Conlow blood is not courageous, and she only ground her teeth and muttered: "Always the same. Nobody dares to say a word against her. What makes some folks so precious, I wonder? There's Phil Baronet, now,—the biggest swindle in this town. Oh, I could tell you a lot about him. I'll do it some day, too. It'll take more money to keep me still ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 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
... undaunted, commands a veteran to strike the image with his battle-axe. The helpless statue offers no resistance. Another blow rolls the head of the idol on the floor. It is said that a colony of frightened rats ran forth from its interior. The kingcraft, and priestcraft, and solemn swindle of seven hundred years are exploded in a shout of laughter; the god is broken to pieces, his members dragged through the streets. The recesses of the Serapion are explored. Posterity is edified by discoveries of frauds by which the priests maintain their power. Among other wonders, a car ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... right, madam," added Peter Conant, "for concocting the plot to swindle Alora's father out of the money his dead wife intended him to have. You are not properly punished, for you should be sent to jail, but your disappointment will prove a ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... of diamonds." The transaction here referred to—though, strangely enough, it is looked on as one that had a political interest—was, in fact, a scheme of a broken-down gambler to swindle a jeweller out of a diamond necklace of great value. The Court jeweller had collected a large number of unusually fine diamonds, which he had made into a necklace, in the hope that the Queen would buy it, and the Cardinal ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... an experienced 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 provincial; who was ready to take part in any comedy in order to make money, and not to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... figure with its uncertain strides, or in the high-featured, mild-eyed face: 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 English grandfathers would ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... like it?" asked Luke, smiling. "Isn't my advice good, to put the money in a savings-bank? But I will tell you how I fell in with Mr. Coleman, and how he tried to swindle me, and then you can judge ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger
... police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,—those who like to examine such details may find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present time. The Government swindles the public, and the small traders swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the superior powers. Hence the art of roguery, under such high patronage, maintains ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... where roulette is played there is another swindle—the restaurants. They fleece one frightfully and feed one magnificently. Every dish is a regular work of art, before which one is expected to bow one's knee in homage and to be too awe-stricken to eat it. Every morsel is rigged out with lots of artichokes, truffles, and nightingales' ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... occupation, between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen's name and his paper acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious Baron, so far from being engulfed like others, rose the higher for calamities. Twice his arrangements had paid holders of his paper uncommonly well; he try to swindle them? Impossible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as you will find. When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will circulate in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. No one but ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... that didn't believe he drew the prize in matrimony. Ask him, however, six months after he's tied. Say, "What do you think of your ticket now?" Eh, Mat Kearney? It doesn't take twenty or thirty years quarrelling and disputing to show one that a lottery with so many blanks is just a swindle.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... a fig syrup, but a preparation of senna; to Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root, of which the principal medical constituent is alcohol; and, finally, to Dr. Bye's Oil Cure for cancer, a particularly cruel swindle on unfortunates suffering from an incurable malady. All of these, with other matter, which for the sake of decency I do not care to detail in these columns, appear in recent issues of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... always fakes, and that they mark down a few things to attract the women and then swindle them by lifting the prices on ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... "It was a swindle Josephine not turning up," Sarah continued, as she stretched herself out in Wingate's easy-chair. "Domestic ructions again, I suppose. How I do hate that ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... these tottering, toddling, swinging miles of legs and stomachs; and on all sides of you, and in the windows and along the walks, the things they wear, and the things they eat, and the things they pour down their little throats, and the things they pray to and curse and worship and swindle in! It is like being out in the middle of a great ocean of living, or like climbing up some great mountain-height of people, their abysses and their clouds about them, their precipices and jungles and heavens, the great high roads of their souls reaching ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... You were going to give two hundred thousand francs as a dowry to your daughter, and you had debts to the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand! Between ourselves it looks like you who had been trying to swindle the ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... daughter of the leno impersonate Persians (Per. 549 ff.), Collabiscus becomes a Spartan (Poen. 578 ff.), Simia as Harpax gets Ballio's money (Ps. 905 ff.), the sycophant is garbed as messenger (Trin. 843 ff.), Phronesium elaborately pretends to be a mother (Truc. 499 ff.). A swindle is almost invariably the object in view. But we have said enough on this score: no one who knows the plays at all can fail to recognize the predominance of farce. Compare on the modern stage the sudden appearance of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... Sir, 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
... Merlin and to go to work and do something for themselves. But you didn't, and I couldn't see what you were trying to do. And then when Wade joined you and Father, I thought he was either helping you put over some kind of a swindle or else he'd started believing in Merlin himself. I should have seen what you were trying to do from the beginning. At least, from when you talked them into cleaning the town up and fixing the escalators and getting the ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... cried Frank. "You have made it clear that what you propose is criminally dishonest, is a gigantic swindle, and that parties concerned in such an outrageous fraud should be amenable to the law and sent to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... ultimate point of Brahma, and the infinite depth of all transcendental philosophy, may reappear in a cheap, portable, and convenient form, as a declaration that the real meaning of some mysterious transaction was that it amounted to a sixpenny swindle at thimble-rig; for to such base uses have the Shaster and the Vedas come ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... English one, it is at least an honest article. It makes no pretensions to be any better than it is. It does not entrap the unwary purchaser by pretending to be a first-class article, when at the same time it may be a swindle. ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... this resolution called forth a remarkable attempt to swindle the commonwealth by means of the absolute freedom with which loans were granted. In America a syndicate of speculative 'men of business' was formed for the purpose of exploiting the simple-minded credulity of us 'stupid Freelanders.' ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... came, 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 ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... 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. Beware, my ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... and became a Jesuit. Having been detected, as it is said, in an 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 literary work.-D. (Gibbon, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... quietly. It is your 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
... that he had calculated upon 'Lige's suicide, any more than that the property would become valuable. In fact if it came to that, if 'Lige had really contemplated killing himself as a hopeless bankrupt after taking Harkutt's money as a loan, it was a swindle on his—Harkutt's—good-nature. He worked himself into a rage, which he felt was innately virtuous, at this tyranny of cold principle over his own warm-hearted instincts, but if it came to the LAW, he'd stand by law and not sentiment. He'd just let them—by which he ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... ten times worse than the 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
... Uncle Eb, ''tain't no swindle. Barker thought he hed a gran' good thing. He got fooled an' the fool complaint is very ketchin'. Got it myself years ago an' I've been doctorin' fer it ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... white 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... simple, honest, country gentlemen will be easier prey for your gamester's snares than are the men you meet at public resorts. And you mean to swindle and fleece them," scornfully replied ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... was examining the card, his visitor was forming in his mind a plan of procedure. He had come there with a carefully concocted lie on his tongue to swindle the sharpest lawyer in Scranton out of enough money to fill ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... little sometimes. Just listen to those colonels. Didn't you hear them say 'damn' and 'Hell's fire' and 'Devil'? O, according to our theology there's no hope for 'em. A man may defraud a widow or swindle an orphan and make a landing; but when he talks about the Devil and Hell ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... saw the same kind of people and the same dance. True, there was a baby eating some candy in the back of the hut, but its jaws did all the dancing for it. This was a swindle which the boys would not further encourage by their presence, and ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Raffaelle thus, whose honour'd ghost Is now Elysium's fairest boast? Far diff'rent He. Though weak and lame In parts that gave to others fame, Yet sought not he by such defect To swindle praise for wise neglect Of vulgar charms, that only blind The dazzled eye to those of Mind. By Heaven impressed with Genius' seal, An eye to see, and heart to feel, His soul through boundless ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... 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 ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... filch, purloin, peculate, swindle, plagiarize, poach>. (With this group, which excludes the idea of violence, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Providence. Don't you think now that he'll git anything worse than his righteous desarvings. He's a fellow that's got no more of a saving soul in him than my whip-handle, and ain't half so much to be counted on in a fight. He's jest now nothing but a cheat and a swindle from head to foot; hain't got anything but cheat in him—hain't got room for any principle—-not enough either to git drunk with a friend, or have it out, in a fair fight, with his enemy. I shouldn't myself wish to see the fellow's throat cut, but I ain't slow to say that I shall go for his ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... habit on Earth. Only they carry it further there—swindle their brothers, deceive their parents, oppress the weak, extort from the poor; work, toil, plot, cheat, rob, yes, even kill! in order to lay up a store of something they can never take away with them, and ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... were promising in other respects. In that critical period, the Government, reposing but little confidence in Russian merchants, whose business motto was "No swindle, no sale," allowed several Jews to become Government contractors (podradchiki). These, while rendering valuable services, amassed considerable fortunes. Notwithstanding the law restricting Jewish residence to the Pale ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... credit to the banks, should the exigency require such aid, to the amount of six million dollars. This was called "Marcy's mortgage." The Whigs stigmatised it as a pledge of the people's property for the benefit of money corporations, denouncing the project as little better than a vulgar swindle in the interest of the Democratic party. Whether Marcy's scheme really averted the threatened calamity, or whether the United States Bank had already carried its contraction as far as it intended, it ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... was made of matters which were a subject for grief and scorn. Hundreds of grown men stood by and saw that boy lose a fortune in two hours, and some forty paragraphs might have been collected in which the transaction was described in various terms as a gross swindle. A good shot was killing pigeons—gallant sport—and the wealthy schoolboy was betting. When a sign was given by a bookmaker the shooting-man obeyed, and won or lost according to orders; and every man in the assembly knew what foul work was being carried on. Did one ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... think I'm writing just now? An author's Guide. You know the kind of thing; they sell splendidly. Of course I shall make it a good advertisement of my business. Then I have a splendid idea. I'm going to advertise: "Novel-writing taught in ten lessons!" What do you think of that? No swindle; not a bit of it. I am quite capable of giving the ordinary man or woman ten very useful lessons. I've been working out the scheme; it would amuse you vastly, Reardon. The first lesson deals with ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... 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
... of it. He pondered briefly the possibilities of taking from his mother the check, which represented the pro rata share of the Dodge estate, and returning it to Lydia Orr. Reluctantly he abandoned this quixotic scheme. The swindle—for as such he chose to view it—had already been accomplished. Other people would not return their checks. On the contrary, there would be new and fertile schemes set on foot to part the unworldly stranger ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... here 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 always at it. They're always sending boys, and ministers in the milk, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... knows the old father isn't competent to handle his property. There was talk of having one of the sons made his guardian some months ago. Joseph has just talked him into selling. If he wasn't my husband, I should say the sale was a plain swindle." ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... this lady's presence,—of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher, whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Professor R.L. CREWE, is a joyous rag. It purports to be the correspondence of a Hun Professor, full of an egregious self-sufficiency and humourlessness and greatly solicitous for the unhappy Alsatian who is ignorant and misguided enough to prefer the Welsch (i.e. foreign) "culture-swindle" to the glorious paternal Kultur of the German occupation. And HANSI illustrates his witty text with as witty and competent a pencil. HANSI has, in effect, the full status of an Ally all by himself. He adds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... heard in the stuffy hotel room was true. It would not be Charles's way to incriminate himself so far unless driven to it by direst necessity. It was clear that he was alarmed for his personal safety. Fred did not doubt that Charles had attempted to swindle him; had in fact gone the full length of doing so. His simple, direct nature was awed by a confession that combined so many twists and turns, so many oblique lines and loops and circles. He sank into a creaky rocker, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... 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 ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a deliberate swindle!" shrilled Mr Pilkington. The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. "I've been made a fool of! I've been swindled! ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse |
