"Swindler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... days after the case was brought the baron was promoted to the rank of captain. As a measure of ecclesiastical discipline, the curate of Saint-Symphorien was suspended. His superiors judged him guilty. The murderer of Sophie Gamard was also a swindler. If Monseigneur Troubert had kept Mademoiselle Gamard's property he would have found it difficult to make ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... but there is more power of writing occasionally shewn in it than in any of his works. I need only refer to the fine and bitter irony of the Count's address to the country of his ancestors on his landing in England; to the robber-scene in the forest, which has never been surpassed; to the Parisian swindler who personates a raw English country squire (Western is tame in the comparison); and to the story of the seduction in the west of England. It would be difficult to point out, in any author, passages written with more force ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... rest of the bag is of equal value. You "go one better" than Sir Peter Teazle and damn all sentiment, and lo! the fellow is no better than a smirking jester, whose antics you can expose till men and women, who had foolishly laughed and wept as he moved them, turn from him, loathing him as a swindler. So it is that although Tristram Shandy continues one of the most popular classics in the language, nobody dares to confess his debt to Sterne except ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Economist, and be one of 'the few rare spirits which every age providentially affords,' and so on. That is absolute and immoral nonsense. When you publish a novel you are at least pretending to supply a certain demand; and if you don't endeavour honestly to supply it, you are a swindler, no more and no less. No, it is all very well to write for posterity, if it amuses you, John; personally, I cannot imagine what possible benefit you will derive from it, even though posterity does read your books. And for myself, I want to be read and to be a power while I can appreciate the fact ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a devil of a heave; not extra good ever; and I regret my engagement. Whiles I have had the most deplorable business annoyances too; have been threatened with having to refund money; got over that; and found myself in the worse scrape of being a kind of unintentional swindler. These have worried me a great deal; also old age with his stealing steps seems to have clawed me in his clutch to ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... repeated Hippus, with tender approbation of his associate. "Ay, you are great in them—an accomplished swindler. Truly he who gets money from you is lost; it were better for him to jump into the water at once, though water is a despicable element, you confounded little swindler you!" And, raising his head, he fixed his ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... a valet of the late Duc de Bouillon, Turreaux called himself before the Revolution Chevalier de Grambonville, and was, in fact, a 'chevalier d'industrie' (a swindler), who supported himself by gambling and cheating. An associate of Beurnonville, Barras, and other vile characters, he with them joined the colours of rebellion, and served under the former in 1792, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... his slow Scotch drawl, inherited from his father (for though London-born and bred, he was still in all essentials a pure Caledonian)—"As far as I'm concerned, I haven't the slightest doubt but the man's a swindler. I wonder at you, Frida, that you should leave him alone in the house just now, with all that silver. I stepped round before I left, and warned Martha privately not to move from the hall till the fellow was gone, and to call ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... the whole thing's nonsense, the whole thing! We don't believe authorities—we're free-thinkers. Did you ever hear anything so impudent? That we should honour a mystery man, an arch-swindler, ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... fair hand and ostensible money and property through our advertisement. Out of that number something like thirty hundred will expect to give you in exchange, if they should win you, the carcass of a lazy and mercenary loafer, a failure in life, a swindler and ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... a pretty unmitigated rascal," he said at last. "And I can't flatter myself that any repentance for his misdeeds offers one an excuse for condoning them. He was a swindler and a hypocrite. You can't get away from it. I never met a more agreeable companion. He's taught me everything ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... oysters—for the sake of having more time to attend the office. Nimblecut, the hairdresser, has been endeavouring to raise his charge for shaving one half-penny per chin, to be enabled to speculate more largely. Shavings, journeyman carpenter, calculates upon clearing considerably more by 'Sister to Swindler' than a year's interest from the savings-bank. There are thousands of similarly circumstanced speculators: they make a daily, if not more frequent promenade to the betting-office; and on the days when the races come off, they may be observed in shoals, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... Fred, now losing all control of himself. "It wasn't a trade at all! It's piracy! It's highway robbery! It was a barefaced swindle, and this swindler" ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... body-snatcher. The man of education learned strange secrets of house-breakers' craft, and the vulgar ruffian of St. Giles took lessons of self-control from the keener intellect of the professional swindler. The fraudulent clerk and the flash "cracksman" interchanged experiences. The smuggler's stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the footpad's reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches. The poacher, grimly thinking of his sick wife and orphaned ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... the traitor, The wolfcub and the snake, The robber, swindler, hater, Are in your homes—awake! Nor let the cunning foeman Despoil your liberty; Yield weapon up to no man, While ye can strike and see, Awake, each gallant yeoman, If ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of us who sees you has any idea that you are a charlatan or a swindler. I know there are many people going about who tell such plausible stories that it is very hard to see through them, but there is a style about your language which assures me of your good disposition. Moreover you have told the story of ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... address I wanted," said he, producing a couple of sheets of paper having the name of the hotel stamped on them. "These are for our friend, Dick. I intend to swindle the swindler," he added, as he handed Reg the letter he ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... public opinion which permitted and justified acts of violence. People need only come to be as much ashamed to do deeds of violence, to assist in them or to profit by them, as they now are of being, or being reputed a swindler, a thief, a coward, or a beggar. And already this change is beginning to take place. We do not notice it just as we do not notice the movement of the earth, because we are moved together ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... it correctly cast, balanced and properly vouched; for a boy always gets his money's worth and thinks he has what he wants. In his trades with other boys, money seldom plays any part, and the little swindler always believes he has got the best of the bargain. And why? Because he has what he coveted, and what was another's. Somehow the other fellow's knife is a little better than his own, it is three blades to his two. When he finds the cheat he has only to swap again. In this way I traded ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... as a malefactor, but as a scarecrow. That is the theory. And the practice is, that we send a child to prison for a month for stealing a handful of walnuts, for fear that other children should come to steal more of our walnuts. And we do not punish a swindler for ruining a thousand families, because we think swindling is a ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... to say that; but he's in the hands of a swindler, of a professional gambler. You see that man?" He lowered his voice as he spoke, and I looked in the direction of his glance. By this time we knew, in a way, everybody on board the ship. The particular man Smith pointed out ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... EXTENSIVE SWINDLER.—A man named William Cairnes, alias Thomas Sissons, with a host of other aliases, was placed before the magistrates at the Borough Court, Manchester, charged with one of the most singular attempts at fraud we ever remember to have heard. The prisoner, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... but a few years since, in the heart of the State of New York, a swindler of genius having made and buried a "petrified giant," one theologian explained it by declaring it a Phoenician idol, and published the Phoenician inscription which he thought he had found upon it; others saw in it proofs that "there ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... man who is now looking over my shoulder is the celebrated thief Palacio, the most expert housebreaker and dexterous swindler in Spain—in a word, the modern Guzman Dalfarache. The brawny man who sits by the brasero of charcoal, is Salvador, the highwayman of Ronda, who has committed a hundred murders. A fashionably dressed man, short and slight in person, is walking about the room: he wears immense whiskers and mustachios; ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... quickly down C., sits on stool L.C., facing her.) Look here, Olivia, old girl, the whole thing is nonsense, eh? It isn't your husband, it's some other Telworthy that this fellow met. That's right, isn't it? Some other shady swindler who turned up on the boat, eh? This sort of thing doesn't happen to people like us—committing bigamy and all that. Some ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... was so completely cut up, that he could not say a word, but sneaked off, hanging down his head, and looked much more like a detected swindler than ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... every operation and circumstance in Nature and providence. It is in direct opposition also to all the unsophisticated feelings of human Nature. No thinking person will venture to affirm, that the beauty of the courtezan, the strength of the robber, or the intelligence and sagacity of the swindler, are more to be honoured than the generous qualities of a Wilberforce or a Howard. And therefore it is, that from a calm and dispassionate consideration of these facts, and independently altogether of revelation, we cannot see how any impartial philosophic mind can evade ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... quarrel however. They both attacked Mr. Bolton behind his back as a swindler, and circulated the story that he had ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... &c (bungler) 701; actor &c (stage player) 599. quack, charlatan, mountebank, saltimbanco^, saltimbanque^, empiric, quacksalver, medicaster^, Rosicrucian, gypsy; man of straw. conjuror, juggler, trickster, prestidigitator, jockey; crimp, decoy, decoy duck; rogue, knave, cheat; swindler &c (thief) 792; jobber. Phr. saint abroad and a ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was conferring on Tomlinson the degree of Doctor of Letters, all over the City in business circles they were conferring on him far other titles. "Idiot," "Scoundrel," "Swindler," were the least of them. Every stock and share with which his name was known to be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the accumulated profits of the Wizard at the rate of a ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... tail, nor sting; Nor is he, as some sages swear, A spirit, neither here nor there, In nothing—yet in everything. He is—what we are! for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman; At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack; a statesman spinning crimes; A swindler, living ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... treatment, Henry returned to Boston, and obtained a letter of introduction from Governor Gerry to Madison, to whom he offered to divulge the whole conspiracy, of which he had been the head and soul, for a certain sum of money. Madison gave him $50,000, and the swindler embarked for France. There is but little doubt that Henry made a fool of the Governor of Canada, and completely overreached the President. The publication of the correspondence, however, increased the hatred both against the Federalists ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... interest of the meeting was principally centred this evening, was to all appearances a mean enough type of the East End sartorial Jew. His physiognomy was not that of a fool, but indicated rather that low order of intelligence, cunning and intriguing, which goes to make a good swindler. The low forehead, wide awake, shifty little eyes, the nose of his forefathers, and insolent lock of black hair plastered low on his brow—all these characteristics may frequently be met with in the dock of the "Old Bailey" when some case of petty ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... forgot to send me that promised form of agreement, didn't you? Thought you'd fooled me, perhaps. Well, I wouldn't be so foolish as to expect anything in the way of fair and honorable dealing when I contract to do up a mining swindler for the benefit of the only meaner creature on God's earth—a patent medicine poisoner. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... take hold of him, wins an envied reputation as a "smart man," and stories of this species of smartness are told admiringly round every stove. Smartness is but the initial stage of swindling, and the clever swindler who evades or defines the weak and often corruptly administered laws of the States excites unmeasured ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... more than once, but he had a warm regard for the girl who had saved his life, and, after all, his ideas were not quite so liberal as he fancied they had become in the Western forest. It was a trifle disconcerting to discover that she was the daughter of a swindler. ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... with 'pedlers, book-agents, and beggars'—I saw the signs up; looked as if they thought I was a thief. I am not used to being treated like a swindler." ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... pleasure of telling you. I put the proposition of an 'investment' to him in a way nobody not a crook would have allowed to be smoothed over—and he allowed it to be smoothed over. He ate it! I felt he was a swindler when he was showing Richard Lindley his maps and papers, and now I've proved it to myself, and it's worth the price." Often, when they had danced, and often during this interview, his eyes lifted curiously to the white flaming ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... time,' Morphew resumed. 'I want to get away, but can't afford it; devilish low-water with me. I must have a bicycle. With that and the camera I may just manage to live; often there seems little enough to live for.—Tripcony? Oh, Tripcony's a damned swindler; I've given him up. Speculation isn't quite so simple as I imagined. I made a couple of hundred, though—yes, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Cornelius far off there seemed to be the hateful embodiment of all the annoyances and difficulties he had found in his path. He let himself go—his nerves had been over-wrought for days—and called him many pretty names,—swindler, liar, sorry rascal: in fact, carried on in an extraordinary way. He admits he passed all bounds, that he was quite beside himself—defied all Patusan to scare him away—declared he would make them all dance to his own tune yet, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... and a humbug, if not a swindler, was enough, Wade thought, to account for any failure. But he did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... fact that people who live outside the law keep to their own plane. The swindler very rarely commits acts of violence. The burglar who practises card-sharping as ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... swindler Peter procured a mule, and arranged to have the animal in the caravansary at daybreak. It was his intention to start for Kialang in search of Eileen with the first tender glow ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... meant to assist the axiom by efforts to earn money. When these continued to fail, he tried to assist the axiom by borrowing money; but he found that his uncle had definitely done with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to be a swindler; he was not even sufficiently ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... shoes. He did not retaliate, but consoled himself with the thought that he had done his duty, to God and society, by marrying his daughter, whatever fate might await him. After vowing to bring a suit against the swindler, Amarendra Babu and his uncle left the premises and did what they would have done much earlier had they not been in such a desperate hurry to marry the lad. They made inquiries as to Jogesh's position and soon discovered that ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... no one a civil word that day. Wool was an atrocious villain, an incendiary scoundrel, a cut-throat, and a black demon. Cap was a beggar, a vagabond and a vixen. Herbert Greyson was another beggar, besides being a knave, a fop and an impudent puppy. The inn-keeper was a swindler, the waiters thieves, the whole world was going to ruin, where it well deserved to go, and all mankind to the demon—as he hoped and trusted ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... aloneness, of uncertainty, of the feeling of hopelessness, goodness of heart seemed the supreme charm. Such a woman as a landlady, and a landlady in New York, was pathetically absurd. Even to still rather simple-minded Susan she seemed an invitation to the swindler, to the sponger with the hard-luck story, to the sinking who clutch about desperately and drag down with them everyone who permits them to ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... or ponder well, and examine the characters of the keepers thereof, before you lead your innocent daughters, and their mamma, into places so dangerous. In the first place, you have bad dinners; and, secondly, bad company. If you play cards, you are very likely playing with a swindler; if you dance, you dance with a —— person with whom you had ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of all the rest, he said, frowning, "You bring me a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and I'll talk to you. But don't you come here with any man of straw. And I'll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... devil did you pick up that seedy swindler? What was he doing here? [He goes up to the table where the plans are, and makes a note on one of them, referring to his pocket ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... cent, you know, but five hundred dollars salary. 'Twas against the old man's will, and he shut his door, and his purse, and his heart. He turned Witchet away; told his daughter that she might lie in the bed she had made for herself; told Witchet that he was a rotten young swindler, and that, as he had married his daughter for her money, he'd be d——d if he wouldn't be up with him, and deuce of a cent should they get from him. They live I don't know where, nor how. Some of her old friends send her money—actually give five-dollar bills to old Jacob Van Boozenberg's daughter, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... constant toil, but the women also are saying let us go free. They are demanding release just as much from their intolerable endless specialization as females. The tramp on the roads who won't work, the swindler and the exploiter who contrive not to work, the strikers who throw down their tools, no longer for twopences and sixpences as you say but because their way of living is no longer tolerable to them, and we women, who don't bear children or work or help; we are all in one ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... continued the humble Stanislaus, "I am rotten, I am a tief, a blackguard, a swindler, a pickpocket, a housebreak, a sticker mit de knife. I vish somebody would call me names all de day long, because I forget sometime dat I am de nashty vurm of de creation. I tink I hire a boy to call me names, and make me not forget. Oh, my lady, I alvays ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... for nothing more was seen of the indignant fellow, and the boys made up their minds that he was only a swindler who had imagined that as he had only boys to deal with he would obtain a watch ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... eventually every one received back the money they had entrusted to the bank; but the whole of the capital and the profits of years of successful enterprise had vanished, and it was calculated by the executors that the swindler must have ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... for the money which was yet to come, and was going cheerfully to write me a receipt for the 20 pounds he was entrusting to me. Now a Copt is not at all green where his pocket is concerned, but they will take anything from the English. I do hope no swindler will find it out. Mr. Close told me that when his boat sank in the Cataract, and he remained half dressed on the rock, without a farthing, four men came and offered to lend him anything. While I was in England last year an Englishman to whom Omar ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... shop and wondered just how much of a faker he was. Once or twice I had heard of surgeons who had gone legitimately into this sort of thing. But the common story was that of the swindler—or worse. I had heard of scores of cases of good looks permanently ruined, seldom of any benefit. Had Chapelle ignorantly done something that would leave its scar forever? Or was he one of the few ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... listeners. One of the experiences through which Albert had brought his hero was that of working as general assistant to a sharp, unscrupulous and smooth-tongued rascal who was proprietor of a circus sideshow and fake museum. He was a kind-hearted swindler, but one who never let a question of honesty interfere with the getting of a dollar. In this fourth story, to the town where the hero, now a man of twenty-five, had established himself in business, came this cheat of other days, but now he ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... from a large experience, I ought to refuse to believe, even on good evidence, anything opposed to it. What is faith in man, or in God, good for, that is unable to resist evil reports concerning them? If I am told that my friend has become a thief or a swindler, and he who tells me says, "I know that it is so—here is the evidence," I reply, "I do not care for your evidence. I know that it is impossible." So, if all the churches in the world, Catholic and Protestant, tell me that Jesus teaches everlasting ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... newspaper the other day how two fakers were found out and arrested. But they had secured a large sum in damages, so I presume they figured that it paid them. I knew Dan Merley was an unprincipled man, but I did not believe he was an accident swindler. But you can stop ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... laws require is by most people thought a work of supererogation; and to slip through the grate of the law has ever exercised the abilities of adventurers, who wish to get rich the shortest way. Knavery without personal danger is an art brought to great perfection by the statesman and swindler; and meaner knaves are not tardy ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... two special indictments? In the first place, for an action of assault and batterification, in cuffing me, an elder of our kirk, with a sticked killing-coat, in my own shop; and, in the second place, as a swindler, imposing on his Majesty's loyal subjects, taking the coin of the realm on false pretences, and palming off goat's flesh upon Christians, as if they ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... cruelly handed the paper to Mary Louise. The girl's face blanched and then grew red, her mouth fell open as if gasping for breath and her eyes stared with a pained, hopeless expression at the printed page that branded her dearly loved Gran'pa Jim a swindler and a thief. She rose quickly and left the room, to the great relief of the other girls, who wanted to talk the ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... live outside him as a law. And still they grow and shape themselves anew, With fuller concentration in their life Of inward and of outward energies Blending to make the last result called Man, Which means, not this or that philosopher Looking through beauty into blankness, not The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie By the last telegram: it means the tide Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love— The surging multitude of human claims Which make "a presence not to be put by" Above the horizon of the general soul. Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... account next door. She owed something in every shop in the whole Quartier. She dared not pass the grocer or the baker in her own street and was compelled to make a lengthy circuit each time she went out. The tradespeople muttered and grumbled, and some went so far as to call her a thief and a swindler. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... that he's a swindler," said Cameron. "I was a fool to fall into his snare. Keep your money and ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... shall be for the sake of the famous witch who is said to belong to this place." The words were hardly out of his mouth, when the matron of the hospital, an old woman, who seemed upwards of seventy, screamed out, "Rogue, charlatan, swindler, there is no witch here. If you mean Camacha, she has paid the penalty of her sin, and is where God only knows; if you mean me, you juggling cheat, I am no witch, and never was one in my life; and if I ever was reputed to be a witch, I may thank false witnesses, ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... much money—only he didn't have any mother to get money out of a grandfather for him, so he was usually in debt. But I believe I've heard he's done fairly well of late years. No, I can't say I think he's a swindler, and I doubt if he needs anybody else's money to back his ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... that nobody ever thought of buying him. It was his own idea to do what he did. For the pleasure of being insolent and showing his boldness, he has pulled down from its pedestal what he adored, consequently the most criminal among the members of the Commune, once a swindler, now a pilferer, is free to say to M. Rossel, who is, I am told, a man of intelligence and honesty, "You are worse than I am, for ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... judgment of his four friends. For our own parts we must pause before we give in to so dangerous a doctrine. Here is a man who has outraged the laws of honour, the ties of relationship, and the duties of religion: he appears before us in the triple character of a libertine, a swindler, and a suicide. Yet his follies, his vices, his crimes, are all palliated or even applauded by this specious facon de parler—"He ...
— English Satires • Various
... crowd about the little office, and the simoom or the bulbul—but I leave this image to persons better acquainted with the East. His appearance, besides, was highly in his favour; the uniform of Sir Faraday, however inconvenient and conspicuous, was, at least, a costume in which no swindler could have hoped to prosper; and the exhibition of a valuable watch and a bill for eight hundred pounds completed what deportment had begun. A quarter of an hour later, when the train came up, Mr Finsbury was introduced to the guard and installed ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... instructed four ministers to arrange such a treaty. The Bankers' Association wants it; the Merchants' Protective Alliance wants it. Amapala is the only place within striking distance of our country where a fugitive is safe. It is the only place where a dishonest cashier, swindler, or felon can find refuge. Sometimes it seems almost as though when a man planned a crime he timed it exactly so as to catch the boat for Amapala. And, once there, we can't lay our hands on him; and, what's more, we can't lay our hands on the money he takes with him. I have no right ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... taken a great liking to you; but you may feel quite sure that I shall not ask you to give me so much as a kiss, and I will never abandon you. Before we get to Rome I shall convince you that the count, as he calls himself, not only does not love you, but is a common swindler as well as ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... departed, Musker began the story of Thurston's Folly. It had grown quite dark. Driving rain lashed the windows. The ancient building was filled with strange rumblings and the wailing of the blast when the old man concluded: "Mr. Geoffrey was too proud to turn a swindler, and that was why he shook off his sweetheart, who tried to persuade him, though he knew old Anthony Thurston would have left him his money, if ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... to Smith's place, and told Smith he was a dirty, mean, despicable swindler—or something like that. Smith smiled. Dad put one leg through the slip-rails and promised Smith, if he'd only come along, to split palings out of him. But Smith did n't. The instinct of self-preservation must have been deep in that man Smith. Then Dad went home and said he would shoot the —— ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... of the said weed were not altogether "the perfume of the lip he loved;"—and a resolute taciturnity. What was he? It is a lamentable fact that an Oxford under-graduate does not invariably look the gentleman. He vibrates between the fashionable assurance of a London swindler, and the modest diffidence of an overgrown schoolboy. There is usually a degree of unfinishedness about him. He seems to be assuming a character unlike the glorious Burschenschaf of Germany, he has no character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... or rather the lucky, Chevalier, nothing human ever received a hotter shower of surmise and sarcasm. That he was "an impostor, a swindler, a spy," was the Earl's conviction, declared in the most public manner. The whole body of matrons looked round on their blooming innocents, as if they had been snatched from the jaws of a legion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... forgotten. A man who has been caught swindling is denounced at the time with an exaggerated ardour which would make a stranger think that swindles were almost as rare as the cases in which they are discovered; but it is only just to recognise that the exposed swindler has a fair chance given him of retrieving his reputation, and perhaps of setting himself up again. The fact is, that so much sharp practice goes on, that the discovered swindler is rarely a sinner above his ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... of all virtues. There is a man at large, at the moment when this paper is preparing for the press (on the 29th of April, 1850), and never once taken up yet, who, within these twelvemonths, has been probably the most audacious and the most successful swindler that even this trade has ever known. There has been something singularly base in this fellow's proceedings; it has been his business to write to all sorts and conditions of people, in the names ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... session, great popular feeling was excited against the coalition. The furious invectives which Fox had been for some years heaping on Lord North's luckless head, were now flung upon his own. Traitor, liar, swindler, were "house-hold words;" and Fox, with all his ability, and that happiest of all ability for the crisis, great constitutional good-humour, found himself suddenly overwhelmed. In the House he was still powerful; but, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... later Mr. Mason came back with the news that Jacob Pacomb had been arrested for the crooked swindler ...
— Nan Sherwood at Palm Beach - Or Strange Adventures Among The Orange Groves • Annie Roe Carr
... returned from her unhappy wanderings; and her mother's family, seizing upon her like wolves, hid her from the world in their den. And I was pleased not long after to read that an individual named Clodman, a noted swindler, had recently been shot in a street-fight in St. Louis, by a husband whose domestic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... real eloquence, and, in the midst of all his changings and vacillations, he was always, without one exception, the steady and zealous friend of the liberty of the press. Poor Sheridan was always in pecuniary difficulties, and overwhelmed with debt; and he at last became quite a swindler in order to evade his creditors, and he died at a time when he could not obtain credit for a pot of porter. On the 22d, the Duke of Gloucester, who was called by the Royal Family Silly Billy, was married to one of his cousins, the Princess Mary. Fortunately for the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the direction taken by the swindler, and now ran across the street and into a side thoroughfare leading to where a new building was ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... General's hand. "You scoundrel!" he shouted, "you are cheating!" The General started to his feet in a fury. "You lie!" he cried. I attempted to interfere, but Romayne had already seen the necessity of controlling himself. "A gentleman doesn't accept an insult from a swindler," he said, coolly. "Accept this, then!" the General answered—and spat on him. In an instant Romayne ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... two-hundred-and-fifty-guinea prize novel, selected by Messrs. Lang and Shorter.) Further, "He writes always from the point of a B.Sc." But the most humorous part of the criticism is this. After stating that Ponderevo acknowledges himself to be a liar, a swindler, a thief, an adulterer, and a murderer, Claudius Clear then proceeds: "He is not in the least ashamed of these things. He explains them away with the utmost facility, and we find him at the age of forty-five, not unhappy, ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... accomplished swindler, demanded two dollars as the fee for entering the mosque, which others of our party subsequently saw for sixpence, so we did not care to examine that place of worship. But there were other cheaper sights, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... keep from bankruptcy, everybody would quit eating chicken and go to eating mutton, and there you are. I decline to invest in a hen ranch right here now, and if you try to inveigle me into it I shall have you arrested as a gold-brick swindler," and Uncle Ike patted the red-headed boy on the shoulder and ran a great hard thumb ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... Hiram, startled out of his usual calm propriety, 'do you not comprehend if that woman had gone out of your store with the calico, that she not only would never enter it again, but she would publish your name over town as a swindler and a cheat, and you never would hear the end of it. Pease had charged her double prices, and the goods would not stand a single washing. And you know whether or not you are ready to pay off the mortgage Deacon Esterbrook holds on ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... They caught all of the men except that wretch, Pedro. The sheriff's taken them to Perilla for trial. He says they'll surely be convicted. Better yet, one of them has turned State's evidence and implicated a swindler named Draper, who was ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... in the marriage contract. Then there was the family money which he nowadays stole, the money spent on what he ate, the clothes he wore, and the pocket-money he needed—in fact, the perpetual alms which were bestowed upon him, just as they might have been bestowed upon some vulgar swindler, whom one unluckily ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... is afraid Abib will be disgusted with him, will call him home, as a disgrace to the university he represents. What! my favorite student, carefully trained in science, to swallow the story of the first madman or swindler he meets? A man raised from the dead? Such cases are diurnal. What would a modern professor think if one of his travelling fellows wrote home from South America that he had met a man raised from the dead, and was really impressed by his story? ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... I believe,' he said; 'you never spent the whole shilling at all on that; you bought something for yourself with the rest, you young swindler! No wonder you won't go back ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... warned me not to. He is morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he could scrape together, is a swindler!" ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... despoils thee of thy whole estate with the stroke of a quill, and against whom thou canst claim no recompense or remedy? What is a pickpocket who steals a five- pound in comparison to a dice-sharper who robs thee of a hundred pounds in the third part of a night? And what the swindler that deceives thee in a worthless old hack compared with the apothecary who swindles thee of thy money and life too, for some effete, medicinal stuff? And moreover, what are all these robbers compared ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... necklace as an heirloom, but that greedy siren, that heartless snake, that harpy of a widow,—for it was thus that Mr. Camperdown in his solitude spoke to himself of poor Lizzie, perhaps throwing in a harder word or two,—that female swindler could ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... has turned Roman Catholic?'—!" Of the begging-letter-writers, hinted at here, I ought earlier to have said something. In one of his detached essays he has described, without a particle of exaggeration, the extent to which he was made a victim by this class of swindler, and the extravagance of the devices practiced on him; but he has not confessed, as he might, that for much of what he suffered he was himself responsible, by giving so largely, as at first he did, to almost every one who applied to him. What at last brought him to his senses in this respect, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... in the family, and the government in the state, are responsible for the crimes committed against filial piety and the public laws. If a king is careless about publishing laws, and then peremptorily punishes in accordance with the strict letter of them, he acts the part of a swindler; if he collect the taxes arbitrarily without giving warning, he is guilty of oppression; and if he puts the people to death without having instructed them, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... me!" said Ashby. "Of course he didn't. I found it all out—no matter how. Oh, the fellow's a desperate swindler—he'll stick at nothing. But, at any rate, he knows that I have my eye on him, and he'll hardly dare to do anything against Katie's interest so long as I am near enough ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... year's crew. Unfortunately he was on last year's crew! That's what made him suspect me, and after dinner he put me through a third degree. I must have given the wrong answers, for suddenly he jumped up and called me a swindler and an impostor. I got back by telling him he was a crook and that I was a detective, and that I had sent a wireless to have him arrested at New Bedford. He challenged me to prove I was a detective, and, of course, I couldn't, and he called up ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis
... say I am not your son. Do you know what I think? I think you are nothing but a swindler—a rascal who wishes to use me as a tool, in order to get hold of some fortune coming to me or to ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... was not the time to make the attempt to bring Hotchkiss to justice she pulled the veil closer over her face and avoided the man's eyes when he chanced to look back. She hoped the fellow was just worried. Of course, being a thief and a swindler, he was suspicious of everybody. He showed very plainly that he distrusted even Carlitos. The Mexican, however, seemed in a cheerful mood again. His outbreak against the "buzzard," Se[n]or Baldasso Nunez, must have relieved ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... that similar peculiarities were present in an affair in which he arrested Bill Smith, at Brixton, some years ago. Resolved unanimously that Bill's recent movements will bear looking into. Opinions will be discussed of the identity of a swindler who has been duping furniture dealers by selling them furniture from houses or flats he has rented. Many a fraud has been detected by these informal discussions in that ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... "timber-shark" who dealt not in acres but in hundreds of square miles, the bogus trust company, and the fraudulent land and investment agent. When even the smallest community begins to "boom," the people of the community lose their heads and the harvest ripens to the sickle of the swindler. And the entire United States—sometimes in one part, sometimes in another, sometimes all together,—with only an occasional and short-lived panic to check the madness, boomed continuously ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... swindler!" they shouts. "That's Prentice Owens! He's the one that took our money, and the boy is one of the gang! Nab 'em, Mr. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... about to sell the Sparrow-hawk for half as much again as she was worth. Let me assure you that you will do nothing of the kind. I would not give half the sum which you ask for her. From the first I suspected that you were a swindler, and it was to obtain proof of it that my son shipped with you as a cook. Have you anything that you wish to say in your defence, or will you go ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... always brought her up respectably? Can any one say anything against me? Can any one reproach me with anything? Do not I treasure my daughters as the very light of my eyes? Has any one ever heard an ill word fall from my mouth? Am I a swindler, perhaps, who give my daughters such a bad example that the State feels bound to step in and take them out of my hands? Well, gentlemen, say what you know of me! Am I a thief, or a brigand, or ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... worsted in the encounter with this arch-swindler. He would sail for San Francisco on the Columbus. Perhaps he would make his fortune there, while Joe, whom he had so swindled, might, within three days, be ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... thefts, speaks with traditional respect of the wealth of such families as the Astors and the Vanderbilts. Yet the cold truth is, as has been copiously proved, John Jacob Astor was proportionately as notorious a swindler in his day as Gould was in his; and as for Commodore Vanderbilt, he had already made blackmailing on a large scale a safe art before Gould ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... notorious swindler had been tracked by a red-haired detective to the manufacturing city, to which Miles first directed his steps. The bills describing the swindler set forth that he was quite young, tall, handsome, broad-shouldered, with black curling hair, and a budding ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... I liked Elodie. Dress her at whatever Rue de la Paix rag-swindler's that you pleased, you would never metamorphose the daughter of the people that she was into the lady at ease in all company. She was a bit mannieree—on her best behaviour. But she had the Frenchwoman's instinctive knowledge of conduct. She conveyed, very charmingly, her welcome ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... chapels and tombs to be made for their families; and there, in the Chapel of S. Jacopo, Berna painted in fresco some little scenes of the life of that Saint, and especially vivid is the story of Marino the swindler, who, having by reason of greed of gold given his soul to the Devil and made thereunto a written contract in his own hand, is making supplication to the Saint to free him from this promise, while a Devil, ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... grant, but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out by a ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me angry? It's their sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this case might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from the psychological data alone how to get ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... struck the scoundrel. Potts complained. Brandon had his son up on the spot; and after listening to his explanations gave him the alternative either to apologise to Potts or to leave the house forever. Louis indignantly denounced Potts to his father as a swindler. Brandon ordered him to his room, and gave him a week ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... rocks, a week later. Then there was that unhappy young fellow, Mackinnon, who shot his sweetheart at Leicester; he made, straight as the crow flies, for his home in the Isle of Skye, and there drowned himself in familiar waters. Lindner, the Tyrolese, again, who stabbed the American swindler at Monte Carlo, was tracked after a few days to his native place, St. Valentin, in the Zillerthal. It is always so. Mountaineers in distress fly to their mountains. It is a part of their nostalgia. I know it from within, too: if I were in poor Hugo ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... productive of immense mischief to his country. Is it not better that he and his family should come to want, than that hundreds of thousands should be ruined, soul and body, for time and eternity? If he has a right to derive his subsistence from the ruin of others, then others, as the thief, the swindler, and the robber, have a right to obtain their ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... young, and already a murderer!—but you could not do it. Examine yourself; you are not naturally bad, but your soul has been envenomed: I know your history, and I make excuses. You have good capacities, and use them badly—you are a vagabond and a swindler; does such a life content you? Impossible!—begin afresh—shall I help you to a post in which you can, with your education, honestly support yourself? I have many connections: it is in my power: there is ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... would bear out his honesty. Quarriar could give as references, to show that he was an honest man and had made a true statement as to the number of his children, seven Russians (named) who would attest that the partner provided by Conn was well known as a swindler. Though he was starving, Quarriar refused to have anything further to say to Conn. Quarriar further referred to his landlord, who would willingly testify to his honesty. But being afraid of Conn, and not inclined to commit ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... have a story already coined, and sure to pass current. This Damas suspects thee,—he will set the police to work!—thou wilt be detected—Pauline will despise and execrate thee. Thou wilt be sent to the common gaol as a swindler. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... perhaps quite know himself. Those who studied this curious Imperial animal did not believe him capable of such pure and simple ferocity. They saw in him an indescribable mongrel, applying the talents of a swindler to the dreams of an Empire, who, even when crowned, would be a thief, who would say of a parricide, What roguery! Incapable of gaining a footing on any height, even of infamy, always remaining half-way ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... she talked to him and next day he joined the union. Then he got working about as a labourer, and one day some rotten scaffolding broke, and he came down with it. The union got a few pounds for her, but the boss was a regular swindler who was always beating men out of their wages and doing anything to get contracts and running everything cheap, so there was nothing to be got ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... lose count once in a while," he complained to his companion. "But nope—fifty even a night, no more ... Well, come on, Pete. We'd better get back to Fats and tell him the swindler got away." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... he, "it was just so as has been said. I wished not to hurt the fellow; but he called me a swindler. Well, I knew the man was in a passion, and I did not care. I only said, 'How dare you, Sir?' and I threw the piece of iron just to frighten him. Well, to be sure, the blackguard fell down like a bull and I thought it was a humbug. I laughed and said, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... his teeth, had told his son that this was the fortune of war, that if justice had been done him at his marriage, the money would have been his own, and that by G—— he was very sorry, and couldn't say anything more. The son had called the father a liar and a swindler,—as, indeed, was the truth, though the son was doubtless wrong to say so to the author of his being. The father had threatened the son with his horsewhip; and so they had parted, within ten days of Walter Marrable's ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope |
