"Fleeced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its beneficiaries Wanted things so inexorably until she got them Waves of sweetness and regret flooded his soul Weighing you to the ground with care and love Went out as if afraid of being answered What do you mean by God? When you fleece you're sorry When you're fleeced you're sick Where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight Whole world was in conspiracy to limit freedom With the wisdom of a long life old JoIyon did not speak Witticism of which he was not the author was hardly ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... that it was every man for himself, in the chase of the happiness which this powerful vote had in keeping. He was robbed by the padrone—that is, the boss—when he came over, fleeced on his steamship fare, made to pay for getting a job, and charged three prices for board and lodging and extras while working in the railroad gang. The boss had a monopoly, and Pietro was told that it was maintained by his "divvying" with some railroad official. Rumor said, a very high-up ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... matted cress and ribbed sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, In every elbow and turn, The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland. O! hither lead thy feet! Pour round mine ears the livelong bleat Of the thick-fleeced sheep from wattled folds, Upon the ridged wolds, When the first matin-song hath waken'd [6] loud Over the dark dewy earth forlorn, What time the amber morn Forth gushes from beneath a ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... only the French government—proclaimed a moratorium, and no rents at all were paid, in consequence of which many house-owners were impoverished and others actually beggared. And it was with a view to recoup themselves for these losses that they fleeced their tenants, French and foreign, as soon as the opportunity presented itself. An amusing incident arising out of the moratorium came to light in the course of a lawsuit. An ingenious tenant, smitten with the passion of greed, not content with occupying ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... one Mr Newton, alias Neville, alias Fane, and with a dozen other aliases, has been arrested at Padua for swindling. This ubiquitous gentleman has been travelling for some years at the expense of hotel-keepers, and other geese easily fleeced, on the Continent In the year 1862, Mr Neville and his two sons made their suspicious appearance at Venice, and they now, minus the younger son, have visited Padua as Mr Robert N. Newton and son, taking up their residence at the Stella d'Oro. They ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... patriarchal piety, our sincerity in all social intercourse, and others of the same stamp; whilst little else is left us but a barren catalogue of broken and dishonest promises, and the consciousness of having been at once fleeced and laughed at. And it would be well if we could stop here, but truth forces us onward. The Irishman of the present day—the creature of agitation—is neither honest, nor candid, nor manly, nor generous, but a poor, skulking dupe, at once slavish ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... silver-sandalled foot Of some long-hidden God should ever tread The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... never witted until, coming upon deck, I rubbed my eyes to find no sight of land, but the sea all around us, and Captain Pomery at the helm, with the sun but a little above his right shoulder. The sky, but for a few fleeced clouds, was clear; a brisk north-westerly breeze blew steady on our starboard quarter, and before it the ketch ran with a fine hiss of water about her bluff bows. My father and Nat were stretched with a board between them on the deck by the foot of the mizzen, deep in a game of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... days, having been prodigal of bribes to the 'justicia.' In effect, her liberation took place sooner than my own. Nevertheless, she had little cause to triumph, as before she left the prison she had been fleeced of the last cuarto of her ill- gotten gain, by alguazils and escribanos, who, she admitted, understood hokkano baro ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... should make, they set off in search of that worthy, who, after some trouble, they discovered in the "Cottage of Content," entertaining John Jones and his comrades with an account of the manner in which he had fleeced Monsieur Shorrock. The Yorkshireman met him with the greatest delight, shook hands with him over and over again, and then began talking about racing, pigeon-shooting, and Newmarket, pretended to be full of money, and very anxious for the Baron's advice in laying it out. On hearing this, the ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... defended his cause, and would not reuolt from his will, Offa depriued him of all his possessions & reuenues that he held or inioied within anie part of his dominions. Neither was Offa satisfied herewith, but he also tooke into his hands the possessions of manie other churches, and fleeced the house of [Sidenote: Offa alieth himselfe with other princes.] Malmesburie of a part of hir reuenues. Because of these & other his hard dooings, doubting the malice of his enimies, he procured the friendship of forren princes. Vnto Brightricke king of the [Sidenote: ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... influence them unduly in second or third arrivals at the same house; but it is a custom so fixed that it has become second nature to them to look for it. It is certainly a person's own fault if he submits to being fleeced by the servants ill a hotel. Attendance is certainly included in the high prices charged, yet the custom prevails in spite of it, and those who do not comply with it will soon find the difference, although there may be nothing ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... that little which the prince spared, his officers and farmers, no lesse couetous than he, conuerted to their aduantage: so that what by the king, and what by his procurators, the church of England was now sore charged and fleeced of hir wealth. Diuerse of hir prelates in like maner were not a little offended, to see their mother so spoiled of hir treasure and liuelihood, insomuch that they practised a redresse: and to begin withall, complained ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed
... loathsome to herself and offensive to others: when she resolved to retire to some obscure corner where she might be cured with as little noise and expense as possible; that she had accordingly chosen this place of retreat, and put herself into the hands of an advertising doctor, who having fleeced her of all the money she had, or could procure, left her three days ago in a worse condition than that in which he found her; that except the clothes on her back, she had pawned or sold everything that belonged to her to satisfy that ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... impression on his practical feelings and associations, serving to illustrate the distinction between what is merely known to be true and what is felt to be so. The unpopularity of direct taxation, contrasted with the easy manner in which the public consent to let themselves be fleeced in the prices of commodities, has generated in many friends of improvement a directly opposite mode of thinking to the foregoing. They contend that the very reason which makes direct taxation disagreeable makes it preferable. Under it every one knows how much he really pays; and, if ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... avowed care of those prelates was to increase their worldly, possessions, to build up the fortunes of their respective families, to grow richer and richer at the expense of the people whom for centuries they had fleeced. Of gross crime, of public ostentatious immorality, such as had made the Roman priesthood of that and preceding ages loathsome in the sight of man and God, the Spanish Church-dignitaries were innocent. Avarice; ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... money 'Squire, and any time I have somethin' more in the law business I'll throw it your way, for I think you a squarer sort of a chap than them ere gang further up the street. I tell you they're sharpers, they fleeced dad last summer and I wasn't agoin' to be ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk, soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee, fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadows speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed from heather and bracken, the vineyards on the southern slope of Crooksbury Hill, the rows of Hankley fish-ponds, the Frensham marshes drained and sown with vegetables, the spacious pigeon-cotes, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Having fleeced pupils, and worked as a special pleader for a time, Mr. Surrebutter is called to the bar; after which ceremony his action towards 'the inferior branch' of the profession is not more dignified than it was whilst he practised ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... of raising cash seem strange, Although he fleeced the flags of every nation, For into a Prime Minister but change His title, and 't is nothing but taxation; But he, more modest, took an humbler range Of Life, and in an honester vocation Pursued o'er the high seas his watery journey,[cj] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... who had fleeced poor Russian Peter. When a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was like gambling or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Pachalic of Syria and Adana as well as that of Egypt for himself and his father. At first the tribes inhabiting Syria welcomed him as their deliverer, but they soon found that they had not changed rulers for the better, and that he fleeced them as much as had the pachas appointed by the Sultan. They therefore entreated the Sultan to take them under his protection. He accordingly sent an army to their relief. It was now that England and Austria thought it time to interfere. Neither of them wished ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... again and say, "Give me another tenner, and I'll be obliged." Then you find out if my hide isn't all gone, and if I can be skinned again you give me Ansya's money. But supposing I'm clean shorn,—have nothing to eat,—then you see I can't be fleeced any more, and you say, "Go your way, friend," and you look out for another, and lend him your own and Ansya's money and skin him. That's what the bank is. So it goes round and round. It's a cute ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... told him how we had found out our mistake, and how your friend had let us off easy, although both were on the detective force. And then he explained how, as you and he were trying to keep the old man and his wife from being fleeced, one of the gang had set up the cry of "Pickpocket!" and had pointed at you; and then, you know, when we fished that wallet out of your ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch
... more sincerely than by the druggist—artful old quack! It was to him the sufferers had to turn, to such straits were they reduced. Drugs were booming, and the druggist, not satisfied with the normal hugeness of his profits, slipped into the fashion and fleeced all round with unprecedented flagrancy. A purgative proclamation—classing pills as "necessaries"—was called for, but it never came. Obese folk, fearful that their flesh was falling off in lumps, drank freely of cod liver oil. ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... single Irishman who has ever been prominently identified with the Government of Canada, if we are at all able to judge, has possessed a spark of honest or true patriotism. From first to last, every man Jack of them has fleeced the poor Canucks unmercifully, and played the toady to England in the most fulsome and sickening manner. Even the best of them were rotten to the core, and but mere adventurers. Look at the case of the "Hyena," as he was called in his prime. One day we find him out at the elbows peddling samples ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... light, For a single day, then lost in night, Leaving only, its place to tell, Sandy fissure and sulphurous smell. With zeal wing-clipped and white-heat cool, Moved by the spirit in grooves of rule, No longer harried, and cropped, and fleeced, Flogged by sheriff and cursed by priest, But by wiser counsels left at ease To settle quietly on his lees, And, self-concentred, to count as done The work which his fathers well begun, In silent protest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... the head he seems Than Agamemnon, Atreus' mighty son, But shoulder'd broader, and of ampler chest; 230 He hath disposed his armor on the plain, But like a ram, himself the warrior ranks Ranges majestic; like a ram full-fleeced By numerous sheep encompass'd snowy-white. To whom Jove's daughter Helen thus replied. 235 In him the son of old Laertes know, Ulysses; born in Ithaca the rude, But of a piercing wit, and deeply wise. Then answer thus, Antenor sage return'd. Princess thou hast described ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Is it not true, also, that the greatest swindlers of this age have been extremely pious? What do you make of Messrs Hobbs and Wright? What do you think of Jabez Balfour? Are not such scoundrels a thousand times worse than a passionate boy like George Mason? Were not the "Liberator" victims fleeced and ruined by professed Christians? What have you to say about Mr. Hastings, Captain Verney, and Mr. De Cobain, who were all convicted of bad crimes and expelled from Parliament? Have you ever heard of the text, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... I said, and asked no more about him, for I have a horror of nailers at any sort of pool, having once been hopelessly fleeced by ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... single week out of the bread sold to the British soldiers. It is said, however, that in some cases when they asked for bread our men got a bullet. Around many a farmstead there hovered far worse dangers than the danger of being fleeced. ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... unmoneyed^; impecunious; out of money, out of cash, short of money, short of cash; without a rap, not worth a rap &c (money) 800; qui n'a pas le sou [Fr.], out of pocket, hard up; out at elbows, out at heels; seedy, bare-footed; beggarly, beggared; destitute; fleeced, stripped; bereft, bereaved; reduced; homeless. in want &c n.; needy, necessitous, distressed, pinched, straitened; put to one's shifts, put to one's last shifts; unable to keep the wolf from the door, unable to make both ends meet; embarrassed, under hatches; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the province was essential to success. This was sometimes done after so magnificent a fashion as to have become an immortal fact in history. The instance of Verres will be narrated in the next chapter but one. Something of moderation was more general, so that the fleeced provincial might still live, and prefer sufferance to the doubtful chances of recovery. A Proconsul might rob a great deal, and still return with hands apparently clean, bringing with him a score of provincial Deputies to laud his goodness before the citizens at ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... at this juncture wore a very unpromising aspect. The Hungarians were fleeced and barbarously oppressed by those to whom he intrusted the government of their country. They derived courage from despair. They seized this opportunity, when the emperor's forces were divided, and his councils distracted, to exert themselves in defence of their liberties. They ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... feared opposition because the girl was poor. What difference on earth did that make? Had he not money enough for all of them? If not, was there any trouble in adding to their store? Were there not railroads to be wrecked; stockholders to be fleeced; Wall Street lambs to be shorn? Surely a man married to please himself and not to make money. Ed. assured the old man that cases had been known where a suspicion of mercenary motives had hovered round ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... generation to generation. Even the good manners don't seem to decay: simplicity, sincerity, kindness, don't really go out, any more than the other things, and fortunately the other things are confined only to a small group in every civilization, to the black sheep of the great, whity-brown or golden-fleeced human family." ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... greatly exaggerated, enriched the pockets of individuals rather than the treasury of the state. In Spain itself, the greater part of the land was owned by the ecclesiastical corporations and the nobles, who were exempt from taxation but were intermittently fleeced. Moreover, the 10 per cent tax on all sales—the alcabala [Footnote: See above, p. 57.]—gradually paralyzed all native industrial enterprise. And the persecution of wealthy and industrious Jews and Moors diminished the resources of the kingdom. Spain, at the close of ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... In the street below was passing a flock of she-goats, all ready to be milked, each with a bell tinkling about her neck. The goat-herd kept summoning his customers with a long musical whistle. Mallard leaned over and watched the clean-fleeced, slender, graceful animals with a smile of pleasure. Then he amused himself with something that was going on in the house opposite. A woman came out on to a balcony high up, bent over it, and called, "Annina! Annina!" ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... flocks consist of sheep and goats which are allowed to run together at all tunes. Black sheep and some with a grayish color of wool are often seen among them. No attempt is made to eliminate these dark-fleeced members of the flock, since the black and gray wool is utilized in its natural color in producing many of the designs and patterns of the blankets woven by these people. The flocks are usually ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... the range in like peace grazed the enemy; white-fleeced, soft and downy as doves, and as harmless and innocent. Of all weapons ever used in warfare the strangest, these living emblems of innocence. It was a warfare fought far from the public eye. The men who fought the cattle were little like those bull-fighters of Spain who responded to the applause ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... and men desire caresses and kisses, a girl should send a message to her Solar Plexus—her reflex nerve—to help her to say, "No." She should let no present tempt her to be fleeced ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... fellows and made a host of friends. You were well-groomed, rode in automobiles, frequented good clubs and had a stunning establishment on Sixty-sixth street where you entertained lavishly. You could afford to, for there was where you fleeced your victims. But it wasn't so very bad, as I said. You chose the wealthy sons of the super-rich, who were glad to know such popular men-about-town as Harold Melville and Edgar Ford. When one set of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... for pension or place, and carefully watching the tide of war. Numerous anecdotes of the period relate to acts of public or private benevolence, which endeared him to the population of the island; but he was on the alert against being fleeced or robbed. "The bulk of the English," writes Colonel Napier, "came expecting to find the Peloponnesus filled with Plutarch's men, and returned thinking the inhabitants of Newgate more moral. Lord Byron judged the Greeks fairly, and knew that allowance ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... here. I say that you Frenchmen cheat at cards—on principle—and are proud of being cheats! I have heard De Gramont brag of having lured a man to his tent, and fed him, and wined him, and fleeced him while he was drunk." He took a goblet of claret from the lackey who brought his salver, emptied it, and went on, hoarse with passion. "To the marrow of your bones you are false, all of you! You do not cog your dice, perhaps, but you bubble your friends with finesses, and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... when peace was made, but he had his way in the end. To his undoing he consented to take with him abroad a young scalawag, the son of his landlord, who had more money than brains. In Hamburg the young man fell in with a gambler, a Swedish colonel by name of Stahl, who fleeced him of all he had and much more besides. When Tordenskjold heard of it and met the Colonel in another man's house, he caned him soundly and threw him out in the street. For this he was challenged, but refused to fight ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... men have become more dependent on each other for production, and have been driven, as I said before, to combine together for that end more completely, the power of the workers—that is to say, of the robbed or fleeced class- -has enormously increased, and it only remains for them to understand that they have this power. When they do that they will be able to give the right answer to the question what is to be done with the extra products ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... master came from Harvard College, too! One would think that this world was just made to enjoy one's self in, just like a sheep pasture, where the lambs go hopping and skipping, not knowing that they were born to be fleeced." ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... would have had thy money. 'Tis a poor consolation, but as such Harry must please to take it, and be glad that friends won his money, who wish him well, not strangers, who cared nothing for him, and fleeced him." ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exhibited to the American woman. This brunette used strong perfumes and burned like a crater. Despite all her blandishments, Des Esseintes wearied of her in a few short hours. But this did not prevent him from letting himself be fleeced, for the phenomenon of the ventriloquist attracted him more than did the ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the canal for a few hundred yards there seemed no alternative but to swim across, so in I went, greatcoat and all. It was awfully cold. At first my clothes and fleeced-lined flying boots held the air and supported me, so that I lay on the surface of the water as if bathing in the Dead Sea, feeling very ridiculous. But only too soon everything filled up and I felt like a stone. Swimming as silently as possible, I had almost reached ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... see, Bartley, her husband, was the greatest rogue on the river; he was up to everything, and stood at nothing. He fleeced as much on the water as she did on the land; for I often seed her give wrong change afterwards when people were tipsy, but I made it a rule always to walk away. As for Bartley, his was always night-work, and many's the coil of rope I ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... had swept the sky clear. The gulf was ridged with foam-fleeced breakers, and the water churned into green, tawny wastes. But overhead there flew the softest clouds, all silvery, dispersed in flocks. It is the day for pilgrimage to what was ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... even three; a cigar, a game of billiards—perhaps there was more than one game, or some other game besides billiards. At all events there must have been something more, for the Captain afterwards declared he was ruined in less than an hour, fleeced, cheated of his little all! It is quite possible that he was nothing of the kind, and that the acquaintances were perfectly honest and honourable men. They would not know he could not afford to lose, a true Polkington always set out to hide the reality of his poverty. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... hands of the sharks, that we must!" He did not see young Jacob's irrepressible smile at this singular extension of metaphor. "He mustn't be allowed to sell that house in open market—never, sir! Confound it, I'll buy it myself before I'll see him fleeced!" ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... with a good deal of the Spaniard in them," explained Miss Morley. "We must make certain allowances for their southern temperaments and customs. They're very poor, and they look upon American and British tourists as made of money, and therefore fair game to be fleeced. The best plan is to take them quite calmly, and never lose your temper however excited they may get. When you've lived here for a time you learn how to ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... at the unhappy Calandrino and would have laughed yet more, but that it irked them to see him fleeced of the capons, to boot, by those who had already robbed him of the pig. But, as soon as the end of the story was come, the queen charged Pampinea tell hers, and she promptly began thus: "It chanceth oft, dearest ladies, that craft is put to scorn by craft and it is ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is? he is less indeed in height[158] than Agamemnon, the son of Atreus, but is broader to behold in shoulders and breast. His arms lie up on the fertile earth, but he himself, like a ram, goes round the ranks of the men. I for my part compare him to a thick-fleeced ram, which wanders through a ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... his employment and forthwith dissipated his little savings. A long-suffering uncle named Contarine, who had already more than once interposed on his behalf, now provided means to send him to London to study law. He, however, got no farther than Dublin, where he was fleeced to his last guinea, and returned to the house of his mother, now a widow with a large family. After an interval spent in idleness, a medical career was perceived to be the likeliest opening, and ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... loan, in 1869, the Dominican government fell into the hands of sharpers and was mercilessly fleeced. The bargain, even if it had been honestly carried out, was improvident enough. Reduced to American money the nominal amount of the loan was $3,788,500; of this amount the Republic was to receive but $1,600,000; yet it contracted to pay as interest and sinking ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... boys—got into mischief, they got into debt with the Jews; for there were Jews at Cambridge, not a few; they were preyed upon by sharpers, were fleeced on the right hand and on the left; many of them learned more harm than good. The elder men, and they who had consciences and hearts, shook their heads, and asked what could be done? For a long time the principle of laissez faire prevailed: the young fellows were left to the tender mercies of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And, though the rabble—the political opponents of the son, that is—recalled those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe and sane people—people who had something in this world to lose—mourned the death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate a ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sundown, the last batch of sheep were fleeced and smitten,[Smitten. Marked with the cipher of the owner in a mixture mostly of tar.] and turned on to the hillside; and Charlotte, leaning over the wall, watched them wander contentedly up the fell, with their lambs trotting beside them. Grandfather ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... ignoble pretext for robbing,—but the saving of your daughter from the whirlpool of crime. The aim was a laudable one, Kandur: besides you were particular as to whom you fleeced." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... Well, I'll start out from there—when I made the acquaintance of that temporary bank-manager chap. Mind you, I'd about come to the end of my tether at that time as regards money—I'd been pretty well fleeced by one or another, largely through carelessness, largely through sheer ignorance. I didn't lose all my money on the turf, Middlebrook, I can assure you—I was robbed by more than one worthy man of my native town—legally, ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... because, truly, the sun was shining in the cold blue sky." —— reminds me of the man mentioned in Sterne's works, who, when his friend looking on a beautiful prospect, compared a green field with a flock of snowy-fleeced sheep on it, to a vast emerald studded with pearls, answered that he could see nothing in it ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... placed on the statute-book stringent penal laws against gambling, but they were a dead letter, unless some poor dupe made a complaint of foul play, or some fleeced blackleg sought vengeance through the aid of the Grand Jury; then the matter was usually compounded by the repayment of the money. The northern sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue between the Indian Queen Hotel and the Capitol gate, was lined with faro banks, where good suppers were served ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... fleeced them? No?" muttered Don Ignacio, with an envious glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... XXXV. A black-fleeced lamb AEneas slays, to please The Furies' mother and her sister dread, A barren cow to Proserpine decrees. Then to the Stygian monarch of the dead The midnight altars he began to spread. The bulls' ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... nobleman of the eighteenth century, "who had been half eaten up by wolves and finished by vermin;" who had been parcelled into provinces, into chatellanies, into bailiwicks, and into seneschalries; who had been exploited, squeezed, taxed, fleeced, peeled, shaven, shorn, clipped and abused without mercy, fined incessantly at the good pleasure of their masters; governed, led, misled, overdriven, tortured; beaten with sticks, and branded with red-hot irons for an ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... says Cora with great majesty. "He may evade giving me a satisfactory explanation of this extraordinary change, but I shall certainly not remain in this place and permit myself to be fleeced. Here, darling!" ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... dashing fellow in the Scotch cloak, attended by a lad with his arm in a sling? That is the famous Sir W. M———,who doubles his income by gambling speculations; and that's one of his decoys, to entrap young country squires of fortune to dine with him, and be fleeced. In return, he is to marry him (on condition of receiving L100. for every thousand) to an heiress, the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of my course. The wolves, close behind, unable to stop, and as unable to turn on the smooth ice, slipped and fell, still going on far ahead; their tongues were lolling out, their white tusks glaring from their bloody mouths, their dark, shaggy breasts were fleeced with foam, and, as they passed me, their eyes glared, and they howled ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... was created duke of Dantzig. The city, however, did not belong to him, but became a republic; notwithstanding which it was at first compelled to pay a contribution, amounting to twenty million francs, to Napoleon, to maintain a strong French garrison at its expense, and was fleeced in every imaginable way. A stop was consequently put to trade, the wealthiest merchants became bankrupt, and Napoleon's satraps established their harems and celebrated their orgies in their magnificent houses and gardens, and, by their unbridled license, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... cents per lot. The prices were so absurd that these sales were treated as a joke. The joke came in on the other side, however, when the officials proceeded to ratify these sales. The public then woke up to the fact that it had been fleeced. Enormous prices were paid for unsuitable property, ostensibly for the uses of the city. After the money had passed, these properties were often declared unsuitable and resold at reduced prices to people already determined upon by ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... the season, the even water having cast back the hot rays in fierce reflection, and, as evening drew on, a refreshing coolness came to relieve the densely packed and scorching travellers. The effect of such a change was like that which would have been observed among a flock of heavily fleeced sheep, which, after gasping for breath beneath trees and hedges, during the time of the sun's power, are seen scattering over their pastures to feed, or to play their antics, as a grateful shade succeeds to ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... beyond all hope. Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves 30 The violets of five seasons re-appear And fade, unseen by any human eye; Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on For ever; and I saw the sparkling foam, And—with my cheek on one of those green stones 35 That, fleeced with moss, under [10] the shady trees, Lay round me, scattered like a flock of sheep— I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease; and, of its ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... ten, But for Holy Church's future heirs, Who've an abstract right to that pig, as theirs; The law supposing that such heirs male Are already seized of the pig, in tail. No, not for himself hath Birmingham's priest His "well-beloved" of their pennies fleeced: But it is that, before his prescient eyes, All future Vicars of Birmingham rise, With their embryo daughters, nephews, nieces, And 'tis for them the poor he fleeces. He heareth their voices, ages hence Saying, "Take the pig"—"oh take the pence;" The cries of little Vicarial dears, The unborn ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... two rather well-dressed black-eyed men came on board. The conductor told us they were the pests of that part of the road—three card-monte men—and that in spite of being carefully warned many travellers, especially amongst the well-to-do farmer class emigrating to Manitoba, were daily fleeced by them, there being no apparent redress, as they are sharp enough to evade any direct breach of the law. These men succeeded in drawing two boys of eighteen or twenty into their toils, and obtained possession of their watches, as ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... thou art able to take away the sin that maketh the powers beneath the earth wroth with us: for Phrixos biddeth us lay his ghost, and that we go to the house of Aietes, and bring thence the thick-fleeced hide of the ram, whereby of old he was delivered from the deep and from the impious weapons of his stepmother. This message cometh to me in the voice of a strange dream: also I have sent to ask of the oracle at Kastalia whether it be worth the quest, and the oracle chargeth me straightway ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... and has enjoined him to keep his adventure profoundly a secret, because he would risk the top of his head on his return to Constantinople if it were known that he had associated with Christian women. It is to be feared that the young man will get safely out of France. Madame de Polignac has fleeced all the young men of quality here. I do not know how her relations and those of her husband choose to suffer her to lead so libertine a life. But all shame is extinct in France, and everything is ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... country that he first began to cause his guardians serious uneasiness. He was in the hey-day of youth when he visited Italy, and he entered wildly into the various delights of that fascinating region, and, what was worse, falling into the hands of certain sharpers, not Italian, but English, he was fleeced of considerable sums of money. The abbe, who, it seems, was an excellent individual of the old French school, remonstrated with his pupil on his dissipation and extravagance; but, finding his remonstrances vain, very properly informed the guardians of ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... He did not know the value of it; and when he came to know it, he would fain have had it back; but O'Kane took care that he should not. JOHNSON. 'They exaggerate the value; every body is so desirous that he should be fleeced. I am very willing it should be worth eighty or a hundred guineas; but I do not believe it.' BOSWELL. 'I do not think O'Kane was obliged to give it back.' JOHNSON. 'No, sir. If a man with his eyes open, and without any means used to deceive him, gives me a thing, I am not to let him have it ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... done this by thyself, lazy one," exclaimed Venus, on her return. "To-morrow I will see whether thou art indeed able to do anything. Beyond the river which flows past my temple are golden-fleeced sheep, roaming without a shepherd. Do thou bring to me ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... there were only four gaming establishments, there would be fifty; instead of being open and public, they would be hid away in private, dark places, to which the young and the innocent would be decoyed and fleeced; merchants could not supervise the conduct of their clerks—these would be robbed by their employes. As the thing stood now, cheating operated a forfeiture of charter or license: this penalty removed, cheating would be universal. "What would ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... radium in the Poor Little Rich Valley, not a milligram here in all the carefully kept reports of Miss Wallace— except what was bought outside by the Corporation with the money it collected from its dupes. Haughton has been fleeced. Miss Wallace, blinded by her loyalty to you—you will always find such a faithful girl in such schemes ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... of society. Soon the great flood would burst forth which would carry away all thieves and tyrants, usurers and bloodsuckers, and the workingmen must be united and get their weapons ready. Unity was strength, and to allow themselves to be fleeced by these hyenas of capitalism was an insult to any ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... themselves were described as carrying off or distributing "swag" and "boodle." In Vol. II of the Eye Witness, for instance, we find the "game of boodle," "dirty trick," "Keep your eye on the Railway Bill: you are going to be fleeced," and "stunt" and "ramp" passim. Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called "George" and "Isaacs." The General of the Salvation Army is invariably "Old Booth," while in the headlines the word "Scandal" ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... I have been playing cards all night; we have only just stopped. I have been absolutely fleeced; that Barabanoff is a demon at cards. [In a tearful voice] Just listen to this: I had a heart and he [He turns to BORKIN, who jumps away from him] led a diamond, and I led a heart, and he led another diamond. Well, he didn't take the ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... got any proper kind of balance where money is concerned, Zoe," he drawled. "Your brain pod ain't burstin' with financial genius. You don't seem to care worth a baked bean that I'm bein' fleeced of thousands! That hog Bablon cleaned me out a level million dollars when he burned the Runek Mills, and now I know, plain as if I saw him, he's got me booked for another pile! Where d'you suppose money comes from? D'you think I can grab out like a coin manipulator, ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... duchess, of a ci-devant lord-lieutenant, who expected to make a pigeon of Marshal Blucher, was fleeced of L200,000; to pay which her lord was obliged to sell a great part of his property, and ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... such good ones on before. I have had money enough to buy them; but people would have asked where I got it from, and it never does to make a show of being better off than one's neighbour. A man is sure to be fleeced, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... with the same glance of refined surprise that the master might have employed when a fleeced plebeian entered his office, demanding to know why the market had slumped in direct contradiction to confidential prophecy. He elevated his patrician brows, but gave the ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... could not have found their business very profitable. Merchants travelling south from Lyons must have been poor booty by the time that they had passed Vienne; and merchants travelling north from Avignon, similarly, must have been well fleeced by the time that they were come to the Pont-Saint-Esprit. Indeed, the lords in the middle of the run doubtless were hard put to it at times to make any sort of a living at all. Nor could the little local stealing that ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... now alas, the Nile is sadly lingering in its rise, and people are very anxious. Poor Egypt! or rather, poor Egyptians! Of course, I need not say that there is great improvidence in those who can be fleeced as they are fleeced. Mustapha's household is a pattern of muddling hospitality, and Mustapha is generous and mean by turns; but what chance have people like these, so utterly uncivilized and so isolated, against ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... sardar sarcastically; "you have been the ruin of us all. Look you, Chandra Babu, we are all Khataks (customers) of yours whom you have fleeced by levying exorbitant interest on loans and falsifying our accounts. It's no use going to law for our rights; you are hand in glove with the civil court amla (clerks) and peons (menials) and can get them to do whatever you wish. So ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... were of course practised wholesale, and publicans fleeced politicians and made fortunes out of the pockets of aspirants for Westminster. In the 'People's Book' an instance is cited of the way some borough elections were 'managed.' 'The patron of a large town ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... distinguish myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than his fur ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... vivant. The master of the ceremonies, who knew that Quin relished a pun, replied, "They have acted by you on truly Christian principles." "How so?" says Quin. "Why," answered Nash, "you were a stranger, and they took you in." "Ay" rejoined Quin; "but they have fleeced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 533, Saturday, February 11, 1832. • Various
... the other side of that glittering stream, my golden-fleeced sheep crop the sweet flowers of the meadow. To-day must thou cross the river and bring me back by evening a sample of wool pulled from each one ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... repeating a whimsical comment on gambling he had once heard his father make—'When you're fleeced you're sick, and when you fleece you're ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the world and more especially in the world of women, I have known none to compare with him. He had travelled far, and seen much, and he forgot nothing. In part he was a quack, but his quackery always had a meaning in it. He fleeced the foolish, indeed, and even juggled with astronomy, making money out of their superstition; but on the other hand he did many a kind act without reward. He would make a rich lady pay ten gold pesos ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... at all, but the Pretoria Government became a most corrupt oligarchy, venal and incompetent to the last degree. Officials and imported Hollanders handled the stream of gold which came in from the mines, while the unfortunate Uitlander who paid nine-tenths of the taxation was fleeced at every turn, and met with laughter and taunts when he endeavoured to win the franchise by which he might peaceably set right the wrongs from which he suffered. He was not an unreasonable person. On the contrary, he was patient to the verge of meekness, as capital is likely ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the sobriquet of "Waterloo Sedley." He again returned to England, and became the "patron" of Becky Sharp (then Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, but separated from her husband). But this lady proved a terrible dragon, fleeced him of all his money, and in six months he died under very suspicious circumstances.—Thackeray, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... White's were the chief clubs of the young men of fashion. There was play at all, and decayed noblemen and broken-down senators fleeced the unwary there. In Selwyn's Letters we find Carlisle, Devonshire, Coventry, Queensberry, all undergoing the probation. Charles Fox, a dreadful gambler, was cheated in very late times—lost 200,000l. at play. Gibbon tells of his playing for twenty-two ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... land presently, and passed near the northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The sun, at last, was really setting. There was the old magnificence of the king of day,—airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with scarlets and crimsons, and striped ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... astonishment, and laughing at my attempts at German. The landlord came up to me when I arrived and sent in a bottle of wine for me, refusing to be paid for it, for he said that the natives of Interlaken fleeced the English; but when Habkern was for once honoured by the {16} presence of one, the people were not going to treat ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... "I shall be fleeced, shorn, ruined," implied Mr. Dymock, "if I go to make a bargain, without a grain of common sense ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... twins, and that in order to maintain their common interests they ought to live in harmony; or, that if Sister Labor had a grievance against its big brother it ought to be settled in a calm and peaceful way. Meanwhile the dear sister was fleeced and bled by Brother Capital, and every time the abused and slaved and outraged creature would turn to her brother for justice the dear fellow would whip the rebellious ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have you ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... only as good as the people in control of them. Many a sure thing has been lost to the original investors by stupid decisions leading to bankruptcy, and many a seemingly sure thing has fleeced ...
— The Gallery • Roger Phillips Graham
... a snowy fleeced lamb to be offered in sacrifice. It was decked with wreaths, and bleated piteously. Presently it was killed, and its blood was caught in vessels to be taken home and smeared on doors and walls to drive away blight and pestilence from the dwellings of men. While this was being done, the crowd ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... Priam, "fortunate in ruling over so mighty a host! But who is this other chief, less in height than Agamemnon, though broader in the shoulders? His arms lie on the ground, while he himself moves from rank to rank like a thick-fleeced ram which wanders through a great flock ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... Soldiers were fleeced out of bounty money. Substitutes, quite frequently colored men, were paid large sums as bounties, more money than they had ever seen before. By collusion between officers and clerks in Blumenburg's office, and the substitute brokers, the substitutes were induced to invest in valueless ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... pounds left, he expressed a wonderful degree of affection for us, and insisted on our boarding in his house. We consented, still to please my darling, who had just then a peculiar right to have every whim and fancy of her innocent heart indulged. We did board with him, and finally he fleeced us; but when I spoke of it to my little wife, she only shrugged her shoulders, and said she did not like to be unkind to her 'poor papa.' So poor papa made away with our little stock of money in no time; and as I felt that it was now becoming necessary to look about for something, I ran up to London, ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... Cale, with a few words in writing from one calling himself Captain Jack, whom I met in Epping Forest, and who told me I should be fleeced and beggared in a week if I fell into the hands of the sharpers of London town; but that if I sought lodging and counsel from you, I might learn my lesson without being ruined thereby. Here is the ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... interest in game; and round its neck, the inscription in golden letters, "Perdix fovit quae non peperit."[217] Then, for her spear, she might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, instead of St. George's Cross, the Milanese boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, in the field; and the legend, "In the best market,"[218] and her corslet, of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it, for a piece ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... will have a look at them this very night. Even a few gold pieces would be welcome, and it was evidently the treasure chest of some Indian nabob or other, his ill-gotten gains from the wretched natives he had fleeced and cheated." ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... supercargo, and I am sure he would pay his wages three or four times over by being able to bargain and arrange with the Chilians and Peruvians. In ports like Callao, where there is a British consul, things are all right, but in the little ports we are fleeced right and left. Boatmen and shopkeepers charge us two or three times as much as they do their own countrymen, and I am sure that we could get better bargains in hides and other produce if we had someone who could knock down ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... frolics on the lawn, stops his gambols and steps gently aside to coax, to caress his woolly-fleeced companion; and the mother talks softly to her child of the innocent darlings, and asks if they are not lovely creatures, and beautiful to look at, as they timidly wander from spot to spot, and nibble the delicate pasture. So it is to the lively fancy of childhood, ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... silence; so I bent these knees of mine And wept and poured drink-offerings from the wine I bear the strangers, and about the stone Laid myrtle sprays. And, child, I saw thereon Just at the censer slain, a fleeced ewe, Deep black, in sacrifice: the blood was new About it: and a tress of bright brown hair Shorn as in mourning, close. Long stood I there And wondered, of all men what man had gone In mourning to that grave.—My child, 'tis none In Argos. Did there come ... Nay, mark me now... Thy brother in ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... greedy of gain as he was drunken. As a matter of course the natives followed the example of their chief, vied with him in selfishness, greed, and meanness, regarded the English as fair spoil, and fleeced ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... our ordinary cotton manufactures are strong and inexpensive, and a few of them have the flexibility which denim lacks. It was possessed in an almost perfect degree by the Canton, or fleeced, flannels, manufactured so largely a few years ago, and called art-drapery. It lacked colour, however, for the various dyes given to it during its brief period of favouritism were not colour; they ...
— Principles of Home Decoration - With Practical Examples • Candace Wheeler
... there was nothing he would not do for Julia. So, sometime after the mud-clerk had ceased to speak, the striker gave utterance to both impulses by replying, "He's no friend of mine," a little crisply, and then softly adding, "Though I shouldn't like to see him fleeced." ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... up brightly as we sailed out into the Gulf. By-and-bye clouds fleeced about it and formed a peculiar halo resembling a cross. We took that for a good omen. We were speculating whether we were to go by Belle Isle or Cape Ray, but about nine o'clock the three lines set their course ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... Corrigidore always has his Presidence, having sixteen others under his Jurisdiction, of which Almanza is one. They are changed every three Years, and their Offices are the Purchase of an excessive Price; which occasions the poor People's being extravagantly fleeced, nothing being to be sold but at the Rates they impose; and every Thing that is sold paying the Corrigidore an Acknowledgment in specie, or an Equivalent ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... that was nothing sacred to him now. His moral went as his power grew. His old tough political straightforwardness withered at the touch of Levantine trickery; his subjects could no longer expect a square deal from him. He sent out his gilded youth to govern the provinces, which they simply fleeced and robbed shamelessly; worse than Athens of old, and by much. The old predatory instinct was there still: Hellenisticism had supplied no civilizing influence to modify that. But it was there minus whatever of manliness and decency had once gone ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... and the air began With his language to pen and ink; [26] For the mug I'd fleeced had been his head man, [27] And had done him for lots of chink. [28] I'm blessed if my luck doesn't hum and ha, For I argued the point with skill; But the once a week made me go ta-ta [29] For a month on the can't ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... There are plenty rich and silly women in Glasgow who are systematically fleeced by the undeserving poor—people who have no earthly business to be poor, who have hands and heads which can give them a competence, only they are moral idiots. No woman should be allowed full use of large sums of money. She is so soft-hearted, she can't say no, and ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... pied-poudreux, dusty-foot), court held at fairs to administer justice to itinerant vendors and buyers PILCHER, term of contempt; one who wore a buff or leather jerkin, as did the serjeants of the counter; a pilferer PILED, pilled, peeled, bald PILL'D, polled, fleeced PIMLICO, "sometimes spoken of as a person — perhaps master of a house famous for a particular ale" (Gifford) PINE, afflict, distress PINK, stab with a weapon; pierce or cut in scallops for ornament PINNACE, a go-between in ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... lady so much sought after must needs be a puissant dame. He was old, and his only hope lay in God's mercy. Yet was he but ill-assured of his eternal salvation, for he remembered how many a time he had ruthlessly fleeced the widow and the orphan. Moreover, he had robbed Florent Guillaume of his scrivenry at the sign of Our Lady. He was used to lend at high interest on sound security. Yet could no man infer he was a usurer, forasmuch as he was a Christian, and ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... lodgings without having to obtain a guide. I will not here describe the adventures I met with. As, according to Nettleship's advice, I looked upon every one who spoke to me as a rogue, I escaped being fleeced, as some of my shipmates were who ventured into the metropolis by themselves. Our leave had nearly expired, and we had to be down at Portsmouth the following evening. When we went to the coach office to secure our places, we were told that the ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... reached his zenith when he was offered fifty dollars in gold for six weeks' toil, and he records with a justified pleasure that "no man had ever been paid such high wages as that." But his energetic spirit soon wearied of retirement, and he found his way to New York, not to be fleeced, like the hayseed of the daily press, but to fleece others. The gambling hells knew him; he became an adept at poker and faro; and he soon learned how to correct or to compel fortune. His first experiment was made upon one Charley White, who dealt faro bank every Saturday night; ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... face that one couldn't well forget. Who was the other sergeant you overhauled for getting fleeced by those sharps ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... was built. But even this the wealthy British did not build. It was left to an American syndicate. P.T. McG., writing of this line to the New York Weekly Post of Jan. 2, 1895, says, "The contract was given to an enterprising Yankee, who built a few miles, swindled the shareholders, fleeced the colony, and then decamped, leaving as a legacy an unfinished road, an interminable lawsuit, and ...
— Newfoundland and the Jingoes - An Appeal to England's Honor • John Fretwell
... that I and Cleon were reconciled. This is the truth of the matter: Cleon was harassing me, persecuting and belabouring me in every way; and, when I was being fleeced, the public laughed at seeing me uttering such loud cries; not that they cared about me, but simply curious to know whether, when trodden down by my enemy, I would not hurl at him some taunt. Noticing this, I have played the wheedler ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... know. Maybe it's a lunatic, or some poor fellow whom Muchmore has fleeced out of ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... to gambling, strong drink, Sunday trading and the rest. These men were out to make money as their type has been on most of the frontiers of civilization, and the unwary traveller or the lonely settler who ventured unduly was promptly fleeced of his possessions and turned out amidst a good deal of revelry in the hours of night. And then one day there rode into that shack-town a young athlete in a uniform of scarlet and gold, the rough-rider hat, the tunic of red, the wide gold ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... that they are not going to stand the loss any longer. It is stated that never in history were novels so atrociously mediocre as they are to-day. And in the second place, the author will insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this scoundrel every time the two meet. Already I have heard that one publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his country house, has been obliged to reduce the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... in the supposed direction for another five minutes, noticing that the trees were closer together, and that there was more undergrowth, amongst which the creamy-fleeced sheep were wandering; and before entering this undergrowth he took a look round and behind to see that ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... one. You see, my heerers, for yourself, my trustin has not been in vane. My text will be: 'And Eve bort a Bon Ton System, and maid herself a fig leef pollynays, cut a la Princesse, and trimmed with dandylion ruchin and sun-flower brade. Then she fleeced a he ram, and of the wool thereof she formed a big bussel, and Adam got mashed on her fine does, and she turned up her knoes at the washerwomans darter wot didnt have on nothin but a palm leef jursey, wot fit ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... in night abyssed, Far and more far the wave's receding shocks, Nor doubts, for all the darkness and the mist, That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, And shoreward lead again her foam-fleeced flocks. ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... dissensions, massacrings; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry, fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other how to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges; but obliged, as the Colombian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets: this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance! "Bravery" enough, I doubt not; fierce ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... good-humor. Though he had been sorely buffeted about the world, he was satisfied that the world, in itself, was good and beautiful. Though he had been as roughly used in different countries as a poor sheep that is fleeced by every hedge and thicket, yet he spoke of every nation with candor and kindness, appearing to look only on the good side of things; and, above all, he was almost the only man I had ever met with who had been an unfortunate adventurer in America and had honesty and magnanimity enough to take ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... an unnumbered host of dishonest men, like vermin from a carcass. Banks were exploded,—or robbed,—or fleeced by astounding forgeries. Mighty companies, without cohesion, went to pieces, and hordes of wretches snatched up every bale that came ashore. Cities were ransacked by troops of villains. The unparalleled frauds, which sprung like mines on every hand, set every man ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... with satisfaction as the one place abroad where, by dint of sternest economy, walks from sight to sight in the rain, and promiscuous cakes instead of the more satisfactory but less cheap meals Letty called square, she had successfully defended herself from being, as she put it, fleeced. ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... gave the benefit of his collaboration, of the wisdom of his suggestions and the depth of his views. Finot and Blondet embodied Bertrand and Raton, with this difference—that la Fontaine's cat at last showed that he knew himself to be duped, while Blondet, though he knew that he was being fleeced, still did all he could for Finot. This brilliant condottiere of the pen was, in fact, long to remain a slave. Finot hid a brutal strength of will under a heavy exterior, under polish of wit, as a laborer rubs his bread with garlic. He knew how to garner what ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... whole system is contrary to the spirit and doctrine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel requires us to help the weak, but the Kanaka is fleeced ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... may only consolidate its forces. Its malice is great; if we attack it, it will defend itself. It makes bad laws which hardly affect us; if it is frightened it will make terrible ones against us. Let us not lightly engage in an adventure in which we may get fleeced. You think the opportunity a good one. I don't, and I am going to tell you why. The present government is not yet known by everybody, that is to say, it is known by nobody. It proclaims that it is the Public Thing, the common thing. The populace believes it and remains democratic ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... any force of argument. He resolved, therefore, to set his attorney to work, who, as he understood all the quirks and intricacy of the law, might be able to puzzle her into compliance. This gentleman, however, who possessed at once a rapacious heart and a stupid head, might have fleeced half the country had the one been upon a par with the other. He was, besides, in his own estimation, a lady-killer, and knew not how these interviews with the fair Cooleen Bawn might end. He, at all events, was a sound Protestant, and if it were often said that you might as well ask a ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across them like a thin dusky veil. To the right a bank of dun cloud began to burn crimson, and to burn brighter till it was like a low hill-side full of gorgeous rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish growth of autumnal shrubs. The whole eastern heaven softened and flushed through diaphanous mists; the west remained a livid mystery. The eastern masses and flakes of cloud began to kindle keenly; but the stars shone clearly, and then one star, till the tawny pink hid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... persuading, casting skilful nets. His appeal for subscriptions was irresistible. He had the magical gift of wringing a hundred pounds from a plutocrat with the air of conferring a graceful favour. In aid of the Mission to Convert the Jews he could have fleeced a synagogue. The societies and institutions in which the Colonel and Ursula Winwood were interested flourished amazingly beneath his touch. The Girls' Club in the Isle of Dogs, long since abandoned ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke |
