"Larceny" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ago my impulse was to destroy every copy that came my way. A copy of "Spring Days" excited in me an uncontrollable desire of theft, and whenever I caught sight of one in a friend's house I put it in my pocket without giving a thought to the inconvenience that the larceny might cause; the Thames received it, and I returned home congratulating myself that there was one copy less in the world of ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... unguarded on the shore, determined to redress their grievances by making a descent upon it, while he was in the pond. Ned and I, who were sitting under a large maple a little back from the stream, saw them peering about the heaps of clothes, like a couple of crows plotting larceny from a robin's nest. We had little idea what they were about to do, however, for they walked away, and it was not till ten minutes afterwards that we saw them again, this time with Alfred's horse and wagon, up in the road, a hundred yards ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... blandest tones. "When you speak of getting in deep you forget that some one besides Hoky was shot back yonder. You came to me red-handed from a deed of violence, and I took you in and became your protector, asking no questions. It's the basest ingratitude for you to whimper over a small larceny when you have added assault or murder to the liabilities of our partnership! But don't forget for a moment that we're pals and pledged to see each ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... conscience. Men could be tried without jury and condemned to infamous punishments, involving stripes and chains, for misdemeanours which in more enlightened States were punished with a small fine or brief detention. There were, for instance, no degrees of larceny, and the heaviest punishment might be inflicted, at the discretion of the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Yeah, but we didn't come here to talk about no asses, neither no half asses, nor no mule daddies. (laughter from de Methodists) We come to law uh boy for 'sault an' larceny. ...
— De Turkey and De Law - A Comedy in Three Acts • Zora Neale Hurston
... the whole, bore something of the look of a madhouse. There was already a postchaise at the gate, from which three individuals had alighted—one of them the postillion said was a mean-looking scoundrel, with a regular petty-larceny expression in his countenance. He was dressed very much like the man in black, and the postillion said that he could almost have taken his Bible oath that they were both of the same profession. The other two he said were parsons, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... that Lord Chatham was the first to set the example of disdaining to govern by petty larceny; and his great son was alike honest in his administration. While millions of money were passing through Pitt's hands, he himself was never otherwise than poor; and he died poor. Of all his rancorous libellers, not one ever ventured to ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... appropriation of another man's goods, it is an axiom that the court (when once the questions of fact have been disposed of) shall adjudicate only on the issue as to whether the particular appropriation of goods in dispute comes under the denomination of larceny, burglary, or other co-ordinate category; and that upon this the sentence shall go forth: directing that the legal consequences which are appointed to that particular class ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... burglaries, stabbing affrays, and every sort of desperate violence. England and France, Paris and London (the only two towns of which she seemed to have heard), appeared to her sinks of abomination, reeking with blood, in contrast to her little island where petty larceny was about the standard of current misdeeds, with, now and then, some more pronounced crime—and that only amongst the imported coolie labourers on sugar estates or the negroes of the town. But in Europe these things ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... succouring the wounded, or assisting the police, or hauling a mitrailleuse if he could help it. Yet the War dog worships the Army; it represents a square meal and a "cushy" bed. The new draft takes him for a mascot; but the old hand knows him better. A shameless blend of petty larceny, mendacity, fleas, gourmandism, dirt and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... Almayer, that in the world below I have converted your name to my own uses. But that is a very small larceny. What's in a name, O Shade? If so much of your old mortal weakness clings to you yet as to make you feel aggrieved (it was the note of your earthly voice, Almayer), then, I entreat you, seek speech without delay with ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... words, the theft of five thousand dollars is grand larceny. The theft of five millions, stained with human blood, is a triumph of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... been a hard day for the poor woman, for the cook had gone off in a huff; the chamber girl been detected in petty larceny; two desirable boarders had disappointed her; and the incapable husband had fallen ill, so it was little wonder that her soul was tried, her sharp voice sharper, and her sour temper ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... more common and less dignified than the gray, and oftener guilty of petty larceny about the barns and grain-fields. He is most abundant in mixed oak, chestnut, and hemlock woods, from which he makes excursions to the fields and orchards, spinning along the tops of the fences, which afford not only convenient lines of communication, but a safe retreat if danger threatens. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... or Leland! You'd all get rich by smashing me, and then you, you two-faced little cur, would buy the Bar L-M back from Leland for nothing, with money you'd taken from Arthur and me! Why, you petit [Transcriber's note: petty?] larceny sneak, I don't know why I am talking with you instead of ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... winning of them artfully—an honourable thing in love. Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and love is indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude and larceny. As long as he means nobly, what is there to condemn him? Not she in her heart. She ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... At that time there was a political crisis; we were under a Republic; anything against a noble was believed. But I am sure Victor de Mauleon was not the man to commit a larceny. However, it is quite true that he left Paris, and I don't know what has become of him since." Here he touched De Breze, who, though still near, had not been listening to this conversation, but interchanging jest and laughter ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Camperdown Senior, to whom the magnitude of the larceny almost ennobled the otherwise mean duty of catching the thief. Then Mr. Camperdown rose, and slowly walked across the New Square, Lincoln's Inn, under the low archway, by the entrance to the old court in which Lord Eldon used to sit, to the Old Square, in ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... trial of an Indian for burglary, himself and other chiefs were present to render any aid in their power, to their brother in bonds. The prisoner was found guilty of having broken into a house and stolen a few silver spoons. The crime of petit larceny, was thus merged in the greater one ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... A combination of Grand Larceny and Piracy, involving the destruction of the Constitution and ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... the South is a "never-failing fund of pastime." The mass (of which he tells a story that reminds us of Lever's Micky Free) is just a mechanism invented by clever rogues for an elaborate system of petty larceny. And what a ferocious vein of cynicism underlies his strictures upon the perverted gallantry of the Mariolaters at Florence, or those on the two old Catholics rubbing their ancient gums against St. Peter's toe for toothache at Rome. The recurring emblems of crosses ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Endeavours, but live like Drones on the Spoil of the Industrious. It shou'd be a Maxim in every well governed State, but especially in Ireland, that Idleness shou'd be as severely punish'd as petty Larceny; and to beg with an Ability to Work, shou'd be regarded and treated as a Kind of training up Youth for Stealing, (when they have learn'd the proper Cant and Tricks of their Apprenticeship) and consequently ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... has been doing something wrong," he said to himself; "he is afraid of being found out! And found out he is sure to be; he has not the brains to hide a thing! It's not murder—he ain't got the pluck for that; but it may be petty larceny!" ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... insult me with impunity; secure that, in so doing, if in nothing else, he would be supported by the rest. Then I had offended my tutor, all my predilections in whose favour had returned with double force, since I had satisfied myself that he was not addicted to the commission of petty larceny; offended him by allowing him to suppose that I had practised a mean deception upon him. Moreover, it was impossible to explain my conduct to him without showing up Coleman, an extreme measure for which I was by no means prepared. Besides, every one would think, if I were to do so, that ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... storehouse of fearful and ferocious happenings; it was a catalogue, an inventory of disease, seduction, theft, robbery, larceny, assassination, murder, catastrophe, pest, incest, suicide, duel, bankruptcy, and the never ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... according to the language they use in courts of law, whether the theft was a petty larceny or a grand larceny. Alas for Billy and Billy's friends! My father decided, in his charge to the jury, that the crime must be ranked under the head of grand larceny, and the jury brought in a verdict accordingly. My father pronounced the sentence, which was that the offending squirrel must die that same day. Billy seemed to be aware of what was going on, for he did not come near the house again till ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... fines. Taxation upon sin was, in those rude ages, a considerable branch of the revenue. The old Frisian laws consisted almost entirely of a discriminating tariff upon crimes. Nearly all the misdeeds which man is prone to commit, were punished by a money-bote only. Murder, larceny, arson, rape—all offences against the person were commuted for a definite price. There were a few exceptions, such as parricide, which was followed by loss of inheritance; sacrilege and the murder of a master by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... assassin, James P. Casey, was well-known and of evil repute in the City. Bold, daring, and unscrupulous, his hand was ever ready to execute the plans of villainy which his fertile brain had conceived. Sentenced in New York to imprisonment for grand larceny in the State Prison at Sing Sing for the term of two years, and discharged when that term had nearly expired; he soon after sailed for California. Shortly after his arrival, he was chosen Inspector of Elections in the Sixth ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... had come and gone. Men like Lassalle are made for just such years. His friends all played their parts, each in his own way, in the struggle for German liberty and union. Lassalle alone was absent from the field. He was defending himself against a charge of criminal conspiracy to commit larceny, an incident in the case of the Countess von Hatzfeld. He disposed of this charge in season to join the editors of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and in the spring of 1849 he completed his apprenticeship as a revolutionist with a term in jail. At the expiration of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... from justice, who had abducted a slave from Kentucky, and carried him into Ohio. The Governor of Ohio refused the demand, upon the ground that there could be no stealing of a man; that there could be no property in man; and that the slave, being a man, was not a subject of theft, of larceny; and he refused, and refuses up to this day, under the common law, to recognize the existence of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... in high spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that ancient house whose ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... mental atmosphere is entered at an earlier age than is commonly imagined; and when such a girl's own personal interests are in any way affected by the occurrences under examination, we are never secure from gross exaggeration and misstatement. Petty larceny becomes robbery with violence; a trifling incivility, a serious assault; a harmless pleasantry, an interesting proposal for elopement; and the foolish prattle of children becomes a ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... grabbing for scraps of food like some wretched starving cur. He appeared to be known to the police of the section, his identity book proclaiming him to be one Paul Mole, who had served his time in gaol for larceny. He professed himself willing to do any work required of him, for the merest pittance and some kind of roof over his head. Simonne Evrard allowed Jeannette to take him in, partly out of compassion and partly with a view to easing ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... and New Haven were framing their first codes, larceny above the value of twelve pence was a capital crime in England—as it had been since the time of Henry I.—Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull's Blue Laws, True and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now arose, occasioned by the prisoners all flocking to see a fellow whipt for petty larceny, to which he was condemned by the court of quarter-sessions; but this soon ended in the disappointment of the spectators; for the fellow, after being stript, having advanced ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... female, who, not suspecting their presence, had entered the garden, dug out some of the provisions, and was about to make off with her booty. In spite of desperate resistance, she was taken to the police station and there duly charged with larceny. Meanwhile her son, on hearing of his mother's incarceration, hastened to find her in her cell, and, after briefly consulting with her, he decided on entering a countercharge of assault and battery against both her captors. Whether or not ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... 1876, and so close was the fight against Samuel J. Tilden and Thomas A. Hendricks that friends of the latter to this day refer to the selection of Hayes and Wheeler by a joint Electoral Commission to whom the contested election was referred, as a fraud and larceny on the part of the Republican party. It is not the part of an historian, who is absolutely destitute of political principles, to pass judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than the author; ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... execution of them. The laws, enacted at different times in these assemblies, were compiled into a code under the sanction of the junta general at Tordelaguna, in 1485. [2] The penalties for theft, which are literally written in blood, are specified in this code with singular precision. The most petty larceny was punished with stripes, the loss of a member, or of life itself; and the law was administered with an unsparing rigor, which nothing but the extreme necessity of the case could justify. Capital executions were conducted by shooting the criminal with arrows. The ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... stress accent existing in the transition period between Latin and French led to the curtailing of long Latin words like latrocinium or hospitale into the words which we have borrowed from French into English as larceny and hotel. It will be observed that the first syllable and that which bears the accent are the two which best withstand change, though the strong tendency in English to stress heavily the first syllable bids fair ultimately to oust the e in the pronunciation of larceny. No such changes arise ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... operandi is to get elderly gentlemen to propose marriage and then to commence her action. That disposes of Miss Paines, and you now know why she is worrying you. Our friend 'Waxy' has another name—Thomas Cobbler—and he has been three times convicted of larceny." ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... commands of God, and they shuddered at the very thought.—They had besides, had two officers put over them, by the British commander, Amos Gaskens and John Hamilton; the first they despised on account of his petty larceny tricks, and the last they hated because of his profanity. About this time, news of the approach of Gates having arrived, a public meeting of this people was called, and it was unanimously resolved to take up arms in defence of their country. Major James was desired to ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... the envy and respect of their countrymen and the luxury purchased by their many millions, whose crimes, moral and legal, committed in the accumulation of these millions, would, if fully exposed, make the performances of Wright and Barnato seem like petty larceny in comparison.[12] But freedom and equality, as guaranteed us by the Declaration of Independence, have recently been capitalized, and "freedom" now means immunity from legal interference for financiers, while the latest acceptance ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... and he would no more have thought of praising other people or himself for having a strict sense of honour in their conduct of a newspaper than he would of praising them or himself for not committing petty larceny, perjury, or fraud. He took, indeed, a very hopeful view of mankind and did not the least believe they were really bad, even if they did show themselves to be tigers on occasion. For instance, I remember his saying to me once, with that ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... maidens, young men and boys, the matron and the maid, alike came running. Altogether, Lynn Hammer was set throbbing with an excitement such as it had not experienced since the baker's assistant was wrongly arrested for petty larceny in 1904. ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... little "gate," with your tail between your legs and plead guilty? Why, he hardly notices you. He has to put on his spectacles in order to see you at all and he doesn't even have to look in the statute book to refresh his memory as to the minimum penalty for larceny or whatever it is. And the way the Assistant District Attorney looks at you! And the bailiffs too. But put up a fight and see what happens. The whole blamed works sits up and takes notice. The judge looks over his spectacles and says to himself, "by gosh, he's a tough lookin' bird, that guy is;" ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... Rye House Plot and of the Western Insurrection to elude, by mere chicanery, the punishment of their guilt? On what principle was the traitor to have chances of escape which were not allowed to the felon? The culprit who was accused of larceny was subject to all the same disadvantages which, in the case of regicides and rebels, were thought so unjust; ye nobody pitied him. Nobody thought it monstrous that he should not have time to study a copy of his indictment, that his witnesses should be examined without being sworn, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... huddled on anyhow. I was partial in those days to a tall figure—and she was, as they say, my style. I put a chair for her; and the sergeant poked the fire. As for the Inspector, nothing ever upset him. He questioned her as coolly as if it had been a case of petty larceny. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... but to think now how strangely things happen! They copped him for "larceny by finding,"—that's all! But SAILL couldn't read, and the jury was kindly, So EDDARD got off, though his chance appeared small. Now would this young Waterman keep out of sorrow, No derelict casks let him—shall we say, borrow? Madeira is nice, but you'd best have a care, Before swigging the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... i. 470. He quotes Blackstone's famous statement that there were 160 felonies without benefit of clergy, and shows that this gives a very uncertain measure of the severity of the law. A single act making larceny in general punishable by death would be more severe than fifty separate acts, making fifty different varieties of larceny punishable by death. He adds, however, that the scheme of punishment was 'severe to the highest degree, and destitute ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... is deemed sufficient. Howsoever honest may be the intention toward these, the limitations render the task hopeless, for all efforts to level the scales to a nicety may be foiled by the shears of the managing editor if perchance another petit larceny should require any ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... heroine for her four volumes, to have the goodness to marry her to somebody more of a gentleman than a "Disdar Aga" (who, by the way, is not an Aga), the most impolite of petty officers, the greatest patron of larceny Athens ever saw (except Lord E[lgin]), and the unworthy occupant of the Acropolis, on a handsome stipend of 150 piastres (L8 sterling), out of which he has to pay his garrison, the most ill-regulated corps in the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... carry out the lesser sentences of the justices, inflicting the punishment ordered and collecting the fines imposed. For instance, when a certain poor woman, Elizabeth Armistead, was convicted of petty larceny at the West Riding Sessions, in 1598, it was ordered by the justices that "she shall nowe be delivered to the constable of Keerbie, and he to cause her to be stripped naked from the middle upward and soundly whipped thorowe the said town of Keerbie, and by hym delivered to the constable ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 'roping-in' unsuspecting persons. I was not long in becoming an efficient in the arts these men practiced on the unwary. We used to meet at the 'Subterranean,' in Church street, and there concoct our mode of operations. And from this centre went forth, daily, men who lived by gambling, larceny, picking pockets, counterfeiting, and passing counterfeit money. I kept Anna ignorant of my associations. Nevertheless I was forced to get money, for I found her affections becoming perverted. At times her manner towards me was cold, and I sought ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... thanks to the excellent German propaganda. "I went especially to get some good stories of Russian atrocities," he said. "I thought that every mile would be blood-marked with evidence, but I came back defeated. Some petty larceny and robbery, a Red Cross flag torn to shreds by a Russian shell, two old men murdered and robbed by Cossacks, and a woman in the hospital at Soldau, who had been outraged by five Cossacks, was all that I could find, even though I was ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... and white bear of Tartary, a few sentences may not unprofitably be spent in describing the genus homo of the Snowy Range. The Tartars, as may be imagined, are a very original race, and in those parts visited by me I found them very primitive and intensive, always barring the petty larceny propensities. Depending principally on the sale of their wool for their support, and being Bhuddhists by religion, they dared not destroy animal life; but when nature had deprived one of their bullocks ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... Scraggs. "That ain't no business at all. You shouldn't consider nothin' short of capital punishment. Why, that's only a petty larceny ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... have formed a correct conception of the objects and value of property, and are both industrious and economical. A large proportion of them are reputed, and perhaps correctly, to be habituated to petit larceny." But this had not become a grave offence, for he said that not more than one individual had been corporally punished by the courts since ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... suspiciously that he had been brought to his fate by the reading of bad books. The sedate authorities of Leipzig forbade the further performance of the play in their city because they had observed a sudden increase of burglary and petit larceny. An edition of 1782, which the publisher, possibly without Schiller's knowledge, had adorned with a rampant lion and the motto In Tirannos, probably added to the vogue of the piece as a revolutionary document. A French translation appeared in 1785 ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... twine. Think of the grand jury filing in to be "charged" by this judicial dignitary. Imagine his charge, his well-chosen sentences in anticipation of the one to come at the end of the sitting. Think of his eloquent disquisition on the law of larceny! It ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... the expense, trouble, and loss of time attendant on the prosecution, are almost fruitlessly bestowed? And here, it is impossible not to lament the accumulated evils arising from the slow operation of law. A man is charged, perhaps innocently, with petty larceny. The tribunal before which he is to be arraigned is not in session; accordingly, unable to procure bail, he is committed to jail, there to lie for three, or perhaps six months, and all the time uncertain whether he is to be acquitted or condemned. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... wars of conquest, seize territory that did not belong to him, and in consequence made himself a great German hero. [5] He may be said to have laid the foundations of modern militarized, socialized, obediently educated, and subject Germany, and also to have begun the "grand-larceny" and "scrap-of-paper" policy which has characterized Prussian international relationships ever since. Frederick William II, who reigned from 1786 to 1797, continued in large measure the enlightened policies of his uncle, reformed the tax system, lightened the burdens of his people, encouraged ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... said, modestly, "that I see a way to accomplish the ends you seek without resorting to larceny. Will you promise me that you will do nothing further in the matter of the documents until I have talked with ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of the fact that the rule owes its form to a gradual historical development, instead of being reshaped as a whole, with conscious articulate reference to the end in view. We think it desirable to prevent one man's property being misappropriated by another, and so we make larceny a crime. The evil is the same whether the misappropriation is made by a man into whose hands the owner has put the property, or by one who wrongfully takes it away. But primitive law in its weakness did not get much beyond an effort to prevent violence, ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... Appeals, and the general doctrine had been annunciated that where a person parts with his money for an unlawful or dishonest purpose, even though he is tricked into so doing by false pretences, a prosecution for the crime of larceny cannot be maintained. ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... entirely unnecessary, saying that larceny was a crime unknown to Brazilians, and that he had provided for exigencies such as this. Moving the piles of thread and embroidery silk to the side of the table, he touched a spring, and a lid flew up. The table, though presenting the appearance of fragility itself, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... had so recently been his colleagues. The course followed by the government was "marked with all that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter." His late colleagues were compared to "thimble-riggers at a country fair," and their plan was "petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming qualities of bold and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the worst passions of our nature—to plunder and to oppress is to gratify them all. They wanted the huzzas of mobs, and they have for ever blasted the fame of England to obtain them. Were the fleets of Holland, France, and Spain destroyed by larceny? You resisted the power of 150 sail of the line by sheer courage, and violated every principle of morals from the dread of fifteen hulks, while the expedition itself cost you three times more than the value ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... official duties by secreting a portion of the said provisions for his own private use, before they were either served up to Caneri, or finally distributed amongst his hungry and rapacious band. Marien Rufa had observed the sly larceny, but what in the name of conjugal regard could have induced the crone to so unkind and unmatrimonial an action as the exposure of her own husband, is not easily to be determined. An upright and indulgent person might be tempted to believe it was a proper regard ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... from that question as I looked disconsolately at the fire. For the fugitive out on the marshes with the ironed leg, the mysterious young man, the file, the food, and the dreadful pledge I was under to commit a larceny on those sheltering premises, rose before me ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the instant forgot Loraine Haswell, the prize of his brother's grand larceny for his pleasure, forgot that this woman was no more than his Platonic friend and remembered only that her chin rested in his hand and that his arm encircled her, as he bent his head and pressed his lips against the ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... "that you are under arrest for piracy on the high seas. Also for deliberate murder. Also for the larceny ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the petty larceny of snuff-boxes and pocket-handkerchiefs, the theft which seeks a modest alms in a neighbour's pocket, is tolerated as paternally as mendicity. Official statistics give the number of the beggars in Rome, I ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... cupidity of his soul, and he wants me to ride ahead, so that he can straggle along in the rear and investigate the contents of the purse at his leisure. While winking at the amusing little act of petty larceny already detected, I do not propose to give his kleptomaniac tendencies full swing, and so I meet his proposal to sowar and go ahead by peremptorily ordering ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... they are discharged? Work for a living? Experience has shewn us they will not. Examine what is become of those in Maryland, many of them have been set free in that State; did they turn themselves to industry and useful pursuits? No, they turn out common pickpockets, petty larceny villains; and is this mercy, forsooth, to turn them into a way in which they must lose their lives,—for where they are thrown upon the world, void of property and connections, they cannot get their living but by pilfering. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... "the fact that you are asking me to compound a felony, commit larceny, and be an accessery after the fact does not trouble you. As I told you before, all I have left is my ...
— Bab: A Sub-Deb • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was arrested, charged with grand larceny. She raised her hand to her mouth as the detective tapped her shoulder, and a few minutes later was taken to the Polyclinic Hospital, to be later transferred to Bellevue. She will recover from the poison and will have to face in court in ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... every possible facility for being dishonest; and, beginning with the more venial kinds of peculation, their conscience has an opportunity of making an easy descent through the various gradations of larceny, till the misdemeanant passes into the felon. In the meantime, the master, taking no blame to himself, nor considering that servants are for the most part what their masters make them, that they are the creatures, at least, of those circumstances which their masters ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 576 - Vol. 20 No. 576., Saturday, November 17, 1832 • Various
... up at Ossining this morning, didn't you?" he asked, lazily for him. He went there occasionally to visit a friend in the state prison who had once served him well in a gambling raid and was now doing a short larceny term there. ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... disgust. He had all the contempt for a petty-larceny thief that the skilled safe-breaker has for the common purse-snatcher. The line between pilfering and legitimate stealing was very clear in ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... paying in addition an income tax. Ten years ago taxes were levied in furs, but they are now paid in coin of the realm. I was surprised to find that these natives are self-governed to a certain extent; minor crimes, such as theft, petty larceny, &c., being judged by prominent men in the towns and the head-man of each village. Murder and more serious crimes are dealt with by a ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... its violation, is just as immoral as to violate any other criminal law. The thing is on the statute-books—nay, in the very Constitution itself —and to offend against it, they say, is as much a crime as to commit larceny, arson or murder. But they may repeat this doctrine until Doomsday, and make little impression upon persons who exercise their common sense. The law that makes larceny, arson or murder a crime merely registers, and emphasizes, and makes effective through the power of the Government, the dictates ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... coincidence between the first part of 'The Bride' and some story of his—whether published or not, I know not, never having seen it. He is almost the last person on whom any one would commit literary larceny, and I am not conscious of any witting thefts on any of the genus. As to originality, all pretensions are ludicrous,—'there is nothing new under ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... you're a very ass. Lord, how my stomach wambles at the same word very poor! Father, if you love your son William, never name that same word, very poor; for, I'll stand to it, that it's petty larceny to name very poor to a man that's o' the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... expression in it than a piece of coal. He was never known to lean to the side of mercy during the whole of his career as an officer, and as commissioner he had exclusive jurisdiction over the petty court of Ballarat, and fined and sentenced miners, who were brought before him for drunkenness and petty larceny, without mercy. He was an ambitious man, and had striven for a long time to get a seat upon one of the benches of the upper courts in Melbourne, but owing to the want of influence, he had never succeeded. Every ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... the Duke, after gazing at him again for the space of a minute; "thou art so deeply dyed a hypocrite, that thy mean features, and clear grey eye, are as likely to conceal treason, as any petty scheme of theft or larceny ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... with the crowd at the scene of a murder in which he had figured heavily. Since then I have helped to break open hotel doors, discovered a villain tied and gagged by other villains, stood on my head in Morris Siegelman's joint, started a riot in East Broadway, helped a detective to commit a larceny, cheeked a British lord, and scoffed at a Hungarian prince, to say nothing of the present racket. So don't you go making plans for the night yet a while, McCulloch, because John D. will keep you busy without any call for you exercising ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... condition, which mental condition is the gist of the offence, the jury in determining this question of mental condition, may take into consideration his ignorance or misinformation in a matter of law. For example, to constitute larceny, there must be an intent to steal, which involves the knowledge that the property taken does not belong to the taker; yet, if all the facts concerning the title are known to the accused, and so the question is one merely ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... customs-revenue at a most disproportionate cost. Thus, a little reflexion shows that smuggling is really theft, and I cannot but think that it would be to the moral as well as the material advantage of the community if it were called by that name, and were visited with the same punishment as petty larceny. Exactly the same remarks, of course, apply to the evasion of income-tax, or of rates or taxes of any kind, which are imposed by a legitimate authority. Travelling on a railway without a ticket or ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... remarkable," stated the hunchback. "But—please—do not look so shocked. I assure you I do not commonly pick young gentlemen's pockets. It is a vulgar pastime, and I am an accomplished villain. Why, once upon a time, I wrote an epic poem. What mere larceny can compare with that fell deed! Besides, this particular outrage upon the sanctity of your overcoat was not without justification. Observe: Ichi, the beast, picks Little Billy's pocket, and the way to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of? Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... qualifications as jurors could be seen on the streets. Here and there you could see the familiar faces of those who had served as jurors for years and yet had never lost a case. Wealthy delinquents began to subpoena large detachments of witnesses at the expense of the county, and the poor petty larceny people in the jail began to wonder why their witnesses didn't show up. Slowly the wheels of Justice began to revolve. Ever and anon could be heard the strident notes which came from the room where the counsel for the defense was ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... thundered Rathburn. "I admit several robberies—holdups of crooked, gambling joints like you've got in this town, an' petty-larceny bankers who robbed poor stockmen with sanction of the law. I've killed one man who had it coming to him. But I've shouldered the blame for every killing an' every robbery that's been staged in the desert country for the last three years. 'The Coyote did it,' ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... Quarter Sessions, I could not refrain from more than once pointing to it in strong language in my charges to the Grand Juries. In July last year, for instance, I was led, in connection with a particular case of larceny, to observe . . . . 'The case itself will, I trust, involve no difficulty so far as the Grand Jury is concerned; but it affords the magistrates another opportunity of lamenting that there should so speedily be furnished no less than five additional instances of the rapid ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... soudebnik it is decreed,' replied Gouseff, 'whoever shall be accused of larceny, robbery, murder, or false accusation, or other like evil act, and the same shall be manifestly guilty, the boyarin shall doom the same unto the pain of death, and the plaintiff shall have his goods; and if any thing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... sentence. Wood, who belongs to a wealthy family in Texas, has a checkered history. He served as a soldier for a time in the Philippine Islands. Here he deserted his post and committed highway robbery. He was tried by court martial for larceny and convicted. Then he was brought to San Francisco and put in the military prison on the Island of Alcatraz. He was finally discharged from the army in disgrace. A few months ago he tried to rob a showcase man and held a revolver at his head while he seized a watch and chain. He was ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... the precinct in which she has lived for years show that she is a woman of very bad character, and that she has been under arrest nine times for drunkenness, larceny, creating disturbance, and ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... advance, Mr. Hotchkiss, and I appreciate what you have done more than I can tell you," I said. "And now, if you can locate any of my property in this fellow's room, we'll send him up for larceny, and at least have him where we can get at him. I'm going to Cresson to-morrow, to try to trace him a little from there. But I'll be back in a couple of days, and we'll begin to gather ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution), the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... abhorrence, and the only weakness in her ethics arose out of her failure to discriminate between relative importances, for she undoubtedly regarded the sale of a glass of beer after the closing hour as being quite as reprehensible as grand larceny or the bearing of false witness. To her every judge must be a learned, wise and honorable man because he stood for the enforcement of the law of the land, and she never questioned whether or not that law was wise or otherwise, which latter often—it ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... steal your heart away, my own, my darling, my child." Then Kate, instead of answering, got up and threw herself at her mother's knees, and buried her face in her mother's lap, and Mrs. O'Hara knew that that act of larceny had already ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the best cook I ever had. Mere man may not understand the enormity of this offence; but every woman knows there is no crime more heinous, more despicable, more unforgivable. She might find it in her heart to condone larceny, think lightly of arson, or even excuse murder; but there is not one who would extend even a deathbed pardon to the person who had robbed her ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... an honest and industrious American citizen no rights? Must it ever be that the poor and downtrodden are sacrificed to glut the maw of that ten-fold tyrant at Police Headquarters? They charged me with larceny, with working the confidence game, and despite my protestations and the eloquence of my learned counsel, who cost me my last nickel, a hard-hearted and idiotic jury convicted me, and that sandy-haired old flint at the General Sessions gave me ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... comforting the enemy. It was determined between there that both would quit the brig the moment an opportunity offered; and the mate even went so far as to propose an attempt to escape in one of the boats, although he might incur the hazards of a double accusation, those of mutiny and larceny, for making the experiment. Unfortunately, neither Rose, nor her aunt, nor Biddy, nor Jack Tier had seen the barrel of powder, and neither could testify as to the true character of Spike's connection with the schooner. It was manifestly necessary, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... with a soul to appreciate the extra-judicial utterances of Mr. Samuel Warren can have forgotten the memorable lament over the decline and fall of the fine old English maid-servant with which, some years ago, he introduced some cases of petty larceny to the notice of the grand-jurors of Hull. The alarm sounded with such touching eloquence from the judgment-seat was taken up last autumn, if we remember, by a venerable Countess, who, in an address to an assemblage of Cumbrian ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... calls to our mind the impersonal mass-crimes to which our own times so frightfully incline, when many a man who would recoil in horror from an ordinary act of pocket-picking or from manslaughter with intent to commit larceny, robs thousands in cold blood by means of a swindling enterprise, or, for the sake of a fraudulent insurance, destroys the lives ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... introduction of SLAVERY. One of the newspapers ventured an article which exposed the scandalous means by which the resolutions had been carried through the House. The 'proofs' of this article were stolen from the printing office, and the parties implicated in this larceny attempted to induce a mob to demolish the office and the offending editor. But the pluck which originated the stinging article sufficed for the defence of the office. The effort to establish slavery in Illinois was kept up for a year or ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... castaways, which had been long floating vaguely in my mind. From the first I had rather doubted the account they gave of themselves. And Kidd! I had never much liked him; he had a hard inscrutable face, and unless I greatly misjudged him was capable of bolder enterprises than petty larceny. He was just the man to steal secretly away and return with a horde of unscrupulous treasure-seekers, for he knew now that there were diamonds in the neighborhood, and he must have heard that we had found gold and silver ornaments and ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... women. Thus: "By the Common Law, all women were denied the benefit of clergy; and till the 3 and 4 W. and M., c. 9 [William and Mary] they received sentence of death and might have been executed for the first offence in simple larceny, bigamy, manslaughter, etc., however learned they were, merely because their sex precluded the possibility of their taking holy orders; though a man who could read was for the same crime subject only to burning in the hand and ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... recall the class of street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote—"poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which they read "Clarissa," they would continue her distressing adventures across the way. By a lingering progress up the street, "Sir Charles Grandison" might be nibbled down—by such as had ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... together on the public indiscrimination. How would he marvel to see literary reputations born, grow old, and die within a season, the owners thereof content to be damned or forgotten eternally for a moment's incense or an equally fugitive shilling. Nectar and ambrosia mean to them only meanness, larceny, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... to urge young men who are to enter business life that they play the game according to safe and well-recognized rules. I would not take the trouble to advise them to study the penal code and to familiarize themselves with the legal definitions of grand and petit larceny, of embezzlement, or fraud, or arson, in order that they might escape certain hazards that beset a too narrow kind of devotion to business success. It is true, doubtless, that a business career affords peculiar opportunities, and is therefore subject to its own characteristic ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... prowlers, who remained on the watch and drew alms by force at nighttime from belated bourgeois encountered in dark corners; next came vulgar vice and its wonted attendant, blackmail; and then theft, petty larceny to begin with, the pilfering of things displayed for sale by shopkeepers, and afterwards more serious affairs, premeditated expeditions, mapped ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... such awful stuff as Yankee pork and salt horse. The very sight of the two sides of the heifer suspended at the flagstaff was an unendurable insult and mockery to the carnivorous whalers, and an incitement to larceny. Davy Fermaner was steering one of the boats, and he exclaimed: "There, they are flashing the fresh meat to us. They would look foolish if they lost ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... be enough," said Dunk. "This is a grand larceny charge and the bail will be five hundred dollars anyhow. Now I'll tell you the best ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes
... ahead!" returned Edmonds, spewing forth a mouthful of smoke as if to expel a bad taste. "What's larceny among friends?" ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... this check for sixty thousand dollars, for he did not have the certificates to deposit. If not, he might get the money; but, also, it might constitute the basis of some subsequent legal action. If he did not eventually deposit the certificates before failure, some charge such as that of larceny might be brought against him. Still, he said to himself, he might not really fail even yet. If any of his banking associates should, for any reason, modify their decision in regard to calling his loans, he would not. Would Stener make a row about this if he so secured ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... no intention of permitting this monstrous larceny to be committed in contravention of his own rights in the premises, and he was considering the best method of wresting the vase from the hands of the insolent Wilton when events began to multiply with startling rapidity. The panel swung open and the thief's lamp flashed upon shelves ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... question is to answer it. Compare Franklin, and Adams, and Jay, met at Paris to negotiate the treaty of peace which was to seal the recognition of their country as an equal sister in the family of nations, with Buchanan, and Soule, and Mason, convened at Ostend to plot the larceny of Cuba! Sages and lawgivers, consulting for the welfare of a world and a race, on the one hand, and buccaneers conspiring for the pillage of a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... number of Northern and Baltimore policemen have made their appearance in Richmond. Some of these, if not indeed all of them, have been employed by Gen. Winder. These men, by their own confessions, have been heretofore in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, merely petty larceny detectives, dwelling in bar-rooms, ten-pin alleys, and such places. How can they detect political offenders, when they are too ignorant to comprehend what constitutes a political offense? They are illiterate men, of low instincts and desperate characters. But their ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... secret corner, we made a very hasty breakfast of these stolen dainties, and since we had not the heart to restore them to our innkeeper, so we had not the face to chide Moll for her larceny, but made light of the business and ate with great content and ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... this country is best in a position to adopt that simple remedy. We do not any longer need wartime revenues. The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. Under this republic the rewards of industry belong to those who earn them. The only constitutional tax is the tax which ministers to public necessity. The property of the country belongs to the people of the country. Their title is absolute. They do not support any privileged ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... to pardon and let loose upon the community one who, having already been convicted of manifold delinquencies, only waits a convenient season for adding to the catalogue of his crimes; and what is larceny, or felony, or even treason, compared with the perpetration of the outrages above attempted to be ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... to military law who commits manslaughter, mayhem, arson, burglary, robbery, larceny, embezzlement, perjury, assault with intent to commit any felony, or assault with intent to do bodily harm, shall be punished as ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... pardoned, even if Martial had greater claims to be taken seriously. As it is, his freedom in borrowing need scarcely be taken into account in the consideration of our verdict. At the worst his crime is no more than petty larceny. With all his faults, he has gifts such as few poets have possessed, a perfect facility and a perfect finish. Alone of poets of the period he rarely gives the impression of labouring a point. Compared ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Heaven I knew what to think!" he murmured; and then he resumed a brisker air and continued, "I am ready to suspect Simon Rattar of any crime in the calendar—leaving out petty larceny and probably bigamy. But he's the last man to do either good or evil unless he saw a dividend at the end, and where does he score by taking any part or parcel in conniving at or abetting or concealing evidence or anything else, so far as this particular crime is concerned? ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... help you to do anything you wish," answered Green, "provided it doesn't amount to treason or petty larceny." ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... some verses well known to the world as the production of M.G. Lewis. He immediately communicated with Shelley, and the whole edition was suppressed—not, however, before about one hundred copies had passed into circulation. To which of the collaborators this daring act of petty larceny was due, we know not; but we may be sure that Shelley satisfied Stockdale on the point of piracy, since the publisher saw no reason to break with him. On the 14th of November in the same year he issued ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... than one thousand years larceny held the scales of justice, and hypocrisy wore the mitre, and the tiara of Christ was in fact God. He knew of the future. He knew what crimes and horrors would be committed in His name. He knew the fires of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs; that brave ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... have been convicted of larceny, after a fair trial before twelve good men of this county. Under the testimony, there can be no doubt of your guilt. The case is an aggravated one. You are not an ignorant, shiftless fellow, but a man of more than ordinary ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... of the Heptarchy is one of murder, arson, rapine, assault and battery, breach of the peace, petty larceny, and the embezzlement of ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... to show that the treatment of property in brain product has been based on this erroneous idea. To steal the paper on which an author has put his brain work into visible, tangible form is in all lands a crime, larceny, but to steal the brain work is not a crime. The utmost extent to which our enlightened American legislators, at almost the end of the nineteenth century, have gone in protecting products of the brain has been to give the author ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with greased dollars. Upon them Worthington lavishes its left-over and shelf-cluttering merchandise, at fifty per cent more than its value, amidst general rejoicings. As Festus Willard once put it, "There is a sound of revelry by night and larceny by day." But then Mr. Willard, being a manufacturer and not a retailer, lacks the subtler sympathy which makes lovely the spirit of ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the two cases, the balance of juvenile depravity is very much against the great Doctor of Grace. He does not seem to have had even a fondness for fruit to plead in extenuation of his larceny. He robbed orchards by wholesale of apples, which, by his own admission, had no attractions either of form or flavour to tempt him. Yet the two anecdotes are so much alike, that one would be inclined to suspect one story of being a mere ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... maybe more than last year's exchange. Well he simply has been holding them over. He can easy explain that. It would break a small outfit to hire enough hands to cover his range and check him up—and he'd buy part of those. The albino's men are petty-larceny bandits compared ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... to be uneasy. Perhaps it was on account of his anxiety to have the morrow come, when he could improve on the trial of his model aeroplane. Then again it might have been that the attempted larceny of his precious plan wore ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... sort of thing of you or Leland! You'd all get rich by smashing me, and then you, you two-faced little cur, would buy the Bar L-M back from Leland for nothing, with money you'd taken from Arthur and me! Why, you petit [Transcriber's note: petty?] larceny sneak, I don't know why I am talking with you instead of slapping your ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... feathers. White-necked storks often begin nest-building about the middle of May, but eggs are rarely laid earlier than the second week of June. House-crows nest at the same time of year, and they often worry the storks considerably by their impudent attempts to commit larceny ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... sister to him; who steals his unripe affections and allows 'em to get frost-bitten— carries him into the empyrean of puppy-love, only to drop him with a dull plunk that fills his callow heart with compound fractures—well, she cannot be prosecuted for petit larceny nor indicted for malicious mischief; but the unfortunate fellow who finally gets her will be glad to go to heaven, where there's neither ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... hasn't burnt properly. Then Hans or Fritz puts in a new fuse and sends it back with loving care. To hoist the Briton with his own petard is particularly sweet to the German mind.... But here it is that military genius comes in. Some gifted spirit on our side procured (probably by larceny) a length of mine fuse, the rapid sort, and spent a laborious day removing the red thread and making it into the likeness of its slow brother. Then bits of it were attached to tin-bombs and shied—unlit of course—into the German trenches. A long but happy pause followed. I can see the chaps ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells |
