"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the roof of a veranda is not intended to be walked on. Your curiosity is insufferable. I suppose it has become professional. Or are you hoping for blackmail? If so, the hotel is the place ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... arranged that the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... when Captain Sharp told his story to the commander of the Guardian-Mother at Aden, that Mazagan had been operating on his own hook in Egypt and elsewhere to "blackmail" the trustee of Louis. The Pacha had ordered a new steamer to be built for him in England; and when she arrived at Gibraltar, he had given the command of her to Captain Sharp, to whom he owed his life ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... Zat night you mean, I did schleep in mine hat because I had got a cold in my head. I vas not dronk, no more zan you. Vat you found in my pocket vas a mere joke, and ze cabman who called next day vas jost vat I told him to his ogly face—a blackmail." ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... and Cavalcaselle, and above all M. Georges Lafenestre in La Vie et L'Oeuvre du Titien, have relentlessly raked up Aretino's past before he came together with the Cadorine, and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of professional sycophancy, adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail, which was the foundation and the backbone of his life of outward pomp and luxurious ease at Venice. By them, as by his other biographers, he has been judged, not indeed unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the standard of our own time, too little ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... have power to alter them. In short, property held by a corporation is held at the will of the legislature, and in a way and to an extent that property held by an individual is not. It is not very easy for the legislature to plunder or blackmail individuals, even when they are disfranchised, because it has to be done by general laws, and direct methods arouse direct opposition. But, as we have seen, stockholders as a class cannot defend their rights, ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... anticipated, and I cheerfully admitted the same to the stockholders assembled. The Eastern mind, living under established conditions, could hardly realize the chaotic state of affairs in the West, with its vicious morals, and any attempt to levy tribute in the form of blackmail was repudiated by the stockholders in assembly. Major Hunter understood my position and delicately suggested coming to terms with the company's avowed enemies as the only feasible solution of the impending trouble. To further enlarge ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... very conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells us ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... killed four or five police officers at various times, and I should say twice as many peasants who have ventured to offend him. He and his band levied a sort of blackmail in the district, and woe betide the small farmer who refused to send in a sheep or a bag of meal once a month. Their cattle were killed and their ricks set on fire; and so in a short time he had the whole neighborhood under his thumb. Whenever a party went in pursuit of him he ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... destruction was, no doubt, attributable to the action of the sepoys and rabble of the city, who during the siege, and in the state of anarchy which prevailed during that period, had looted to their hearts' content, levying blackmail on the richer inhabitants and pursuing their evil course without let or hindrance. Still, that which had escaped the plundering and devastating hands of the sepoys was most effectually ruined by our men. Not a single ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... large number of offices. Now at last, the reformers thought, American politics would be purified. But, no! The corruption, simply took a new and more alarming turn. Direct money contributions took the place of the spoils. It became the practice to levy blackmail on corporations either to be let alone, or for the purpose of fleecing the public. The monopolies granted to protected industries are the source of a large share of these "campaign funds." The Legislatures are crowded ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... had she had? Her mother died in childbirth and her father, a professional gambler, abandoned the little girl to the tender mercies of an indifferent neighbor. When she was about eight years old her father was arrested. He refused to pay police blackmail, was indicted, railroaded to prison and died soon after in convict stripes. There was no provision for Annie's maintenance, so at the age of nine she found herself toiling in a factory, a helpless victim of the brutalizing ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... detectives such as I have described do not, as a usual thing, go out to learn facts, but rather to make, at all costs, the evidence desired by the patron."[6] He shows the methods of trickery and deceit by which these detectives blackmail the wealthy, and the various means they employ for convicting any man, no matter how innocent, of any crime. "We shudder when we hear of the system of espionage maintained in Russia," he adds, "while ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... believed to be the chief instigator. His character was indifferent, and he had money invested in Gregory's shop; and the business was in so bad a way that there was a temptation to seek for some large haul by way of blackmail. Mrs. Leigh Perrot was selected as the victim, people thought, because her husband was so extremely devoted to her that he would be sure to do anything to save her from the least vexation. If so, the conspirators ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... had turned up again. In Brazil he had heard a story of Ali Tschorbadschi's jewels from an old criminal from Turkey, and he had returned to blackmail Timar. But he did not find him till Timar was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... true. Oberg's purpose having been served, he demanded half the property on board, or he would give notice to the Russian naval authorities that the pirate yacht was afloat. He attempted to blackmail my father, as he had already done so many times, but his scheme was frustrated. My father, because of his inhuman treatment of poor Elma, defied him, when it appears that Oberg, who was in Helsingfors, telegraphed to ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... people by force. Never blackmail. Be content with your pay." He looked at the group before him and said: "Let every man of you who owns two garments share with the person who has none at all. If you have food, ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... account of him in the European Magazine, Jan. 1786. BOSWELL. There we learn that he was in his time a grammar-school usher, actor, poet, the puffing partner in a quack medicine, and tutor to a youthful Earl. He was suspected of levying blackmail by threats of satiric publications, and he suffered from a disease which rendered him an object almost offensive to sight. He was born in 1738 or 1739, and died ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... whistled. Forty dollars a week was, he wagered to himself, more money than any other maid in Hamilton was lucky enough to receive! Nita in a new light—an over-generous Nita! Or—was Nita herself paying blackmail on a ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... the longest liver should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... dear Winter, we have now got together every material stone in our edifice. Mrs. Capella's yielding to blackmail is the keystone of the arch. Every loose block fits at once into its proper place. The Japanese, Ooma, must have met Sir Alan and discussed this very question with him. The baronet must have unwittingly revealed the family secret, and the Jap was clever enough to perceive its ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... hesitation in saying that there are evil-disposed, Indians, especially of late years, who deliberately seek to provoke disagreeable incidents by their own misbehaviour, either in the hope of levying blackmail or in order to make political capital by posing as the victims of English brutality. But even when Englishmen put themselves entirely in the wrong, there is perhaps a tendency amongst Anglo-Indians—chiefly amongst the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... little racket you worked on me, I believe. It's a real nice game. I like it. If you ever mull or meddle with my affairs again I'll turn another check. That's for your official information—so you can keep the bank from any little indiscretions. I'm telling you! This isn't blackmail. This is directions. Sit down and write me ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the little key with the brass head, and, associating one with the other, he tried the key in the lock. The door opened. He saw nothing but papers. They must be very valuable to have been put away in a safe, and the key to which to be of so much importance. Perhaps a thought of blackmail occurred to him as a useful possibility in helping him in his designs on Mademoiselle Stangerson. He quickly made a parcel of the papers and took it to the lavatory in the vestibule. Between the time of his first examination ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... things and Florence was the only created being who had any idea that the Ashburnhams were not just good people with nothing to their tails. She determined at once, not so much to give Florence the privilege of her intimacy—which would have been the payment of a kind of blackmail—as to keep Florence under observation until she could have demonstrated to Florence that she was not in the least jealous of poor Maisie. So that was why she had entered the dining-room arm in arm with my wife, and why she had so markedly ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... cell he chewed the cud of revenge. Yes, let them take him before the magistrate; it was not he that was afraid of justice. He would expose her, the false Catholic, the she-cat! A pretty convert! Another man would have preferred to blackmail her, he told himself with righteous indignation, especially in such straits of poverty. But he—the thought had scarcely crossed his mind. He had not even thought of her helping him, only of the joy of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... ignoble knight, is a thing done once and for all. Remains merely obedience in very plain and absolute terms on the part of lady to lord, obedience which, in the last resort, can be exacted by withholding supplies—not so uncommon a form of blackmail as it suits the dominant sex to imagine. Lady Harman's emancipation does not take the conventionally unconventional form, for some deeper reason, I think, than that her sententious friend and would-be lover, George Brumley, could ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... another gallant and gracious individual, that his honour stood rooted in dishonour. He was, indeed, somewhat in the position of such an aristocrat in a romance, whose splendour has the dark spot of a secret and a sort of blackmail. There was, to begin with, an uncomfortable paradox in the tale of his pedigree. Many heroes have claimed to be descended from the gods, from beings greater than themselves; but he himself was far more heroic than his ancestors. His glory did not come from the Crusades but from the Great Pillage. ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... than the Fatimite conquest soon afflicted Syria. The Karmati leader, Hasan ben Ahmad, surnamed El-Asam, finding the blackmail, which he had lately received out of the revenues of Damascus, suddenly stopped, resolved to extort it by force of arms. The Fatimites indeed sprang from the same movement, and their founder professed the same political and irreligious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... thinking of the law, for they shared their spoils with the supposed officers of the law. And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... been so long delayed, he could get nothing but monosyllables out of Ivan, who soon showed plainly that he would say nothing more concerning it. And, indeed, when a young and honorable officer has come to the determination to use blackmail upon his Colonel, be the purpose never so laudable, it is not a matter that he is likely to talk of, even with ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... extent of corruption was not suspected until the Lexow investigating committee brought it to light. It is certain that not even the committee itself conceived the vastness of the system of thuggery and blackmail. Having begun its labors, evidence poured in upon it in a constantly increasing stream. It could do no less than go ahead. Its prosecuting attorney, John C. Goff, who not so many years ago was a counter jumper in a big New York store, and is now the city recorder at a salary of $12,000 a year ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... were mostly small and shop-soiled and Neepy Thang had to set out at once before he had had as much as a week in London. I will briefly sketch his project. Not many knew it, for where the form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have the better (which of course in various ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... married, hang me if she hadn't cleared out. No scene, no tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing me luck. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... did you do?" I paused to eye him a moment. "Why, you went down to Merton and dug up all the old family skeletons. Now you were surer of your ground; you were ready to levy tribute—blackmail—not from Page, though, because he would have promptly kicked you out—but again your nerve failed you. That's where you have fallen down, Burke, all the way through. You carried a letter or two to Fluette to prove your claims; then, before their loss was discovered, you brought ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, theft, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Aylmore goes abroad, makes money, in time comes back, starts new career, gets into Parliament, becomes big man. In time, Maitland, who, after his time, has also gone abroad, also comes back. The two meet. Maitland probably tries to blackmail Aylmore or threatens to let folk know that the flourishing Mr. Aylmore, M.P., is an ex-convict. Result—Aylmore lures him to the Temple and quiets him. Pooh!—the whole thing's clear as ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... is interwoven with blackmail: even some of the noblest people do favours for other people who are depended upon not to tell somebody something that the noblest people have done. Blackmail is born into us all, and our nurses teach us more blackmail by threatening to ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... would now be going peaceful, with the kind policeman instead of being a willing victim of a very pleasant form of blackmail." ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... combination of gratitude and blackmail. The merit system is an attempt to secure efficiency without recognizing friendship or fear. We can safely allow the participation of merit system employees in an agitation so long as they do not go to the point where official advantage may be had through the ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... had kept that up, and things had gone from bad to worse. The police blackmail had taken out of it what little profit there was in the push-cart business. Times had grown harder than they ever were in Hester Street. To cap it all, two weeks ago gas had begun to leak into the basement ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... future dealings, by promising to reveal to one or other of them a matter of importance and probable money-value, and he could use it also as a perpetual threat to hold over Colonel Kelmscott, if ever it should be needful to extort blackmail from the possessor of Tilgate, or to thwart his schemes ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... them, a majority being young in their first season and with little or no experience of human guile. No one cares to shoot them, in the abundance of larger game, and the absence of stones from the fat prairie-soil places them out of danger from the small boy. Their only foe is the hawk, who levies blackmail on them as coolly and regularly as any other plumed cateran. Partly, perhaps, by reason of this outside pressure, they are cheek by jowl with the poultry,—the cow-bunting, which is the pet prey of the hawk, following them into the back porch and insisting sometimes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... that he meant to hide. For one thing, Featherstone never spoke about his life in the Old Country, and Foster was surprised when he stated his intention of spending a few months there. It looked as if Daly knew his secret and had used his knowledge to blackmail him. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... lawlessness prevails in the districts remote from the towns; while in the forests that clothe the side of Mount Etna, there are numerous hordes of bandits who set the authorities at defiance, levy blackmail throughout the surrounding villages, and carry off wealthy inhabitants, and put them to ransom. No one in his senses would think of ascending that mountain, unless he had something like an ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... to impeach the purity of the stadholder's motives. As admiral or captain-general, he received high salaries, besides a tenth part of all prize-money gained at sea by the fleets, or of ransom and blackmail on land by the armies of the republic. His profession, his ambition, his delights, were those of a soldier. As a soldier in a great war, he was more necessary to his countrymen than he could expect to be as a statesman in time of peace. But nothing ever ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... concocted in emergency, as he asserted in his confession at London, or whether it was a carefully constructed lie taught him by his father in order to revenge himself upon some hated neighbors, and perhaps to exact blackmail, as some of the accused later charged, we shall never know. In later life the boy is said to have admitted that he had been set on by his father,[8] but the narrative possesses certain earmarks of a story struck out by a ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... "Ethics of blackmail," commented Mr. Travers with unexpected sarcasm. It flashed through his wife's mind that perhaps she didn't know him so well as she had supposed. It was as if the polished and solemn crust of hard proprieties had cracked slightly, here and there, under ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... about right now, Barker. You're the only person except the Chief here, and myself, who knows that Mrs. Lawrence is connected with the case. I want her name kept out of it. Of course that makes it impossible to arrest you for blackmail—and so, if you tell me the entire truth, I'm going to let you go free. But if I ever hear of her name in connection with this case I'll know that you have leaked—and I'll get you if it takes me ten ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... left here in peace. I've not come to blackmail you into loving me, Cecily. Yes, you shall be left in peace to move the furniture about." Glancing toward the table, he saw Mr Gainsborough's birthday gift. He took it up, looked at it for a moment, and then replaced it. His manner was involuntarily expressive. Even if she ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... the detective denouncing him, he would denounce the detective. Of the police he would become an ally. He would call upon them to arrest a man who was planning to blackmail Mrs. James Blagwin. ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... brothel-keeper in prison, is worth more than a heavy sentence by way of fine, which can be met by further oppression of his slaves. Besides, the heavier the sentence threatened, if there be an alternative fine, the more potent implement it furnishes for blackmail in the hands of corrupt police officials. Penalties by means of fines invariably tend to degenerate into a monthly squeeze to the police, in payment for toleration, and thus tend to make the police official a defender of social vice, rather than ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... all I could get out of her. If she had meant me to know the character of Gedge's turpitude, she would have told me of her own accord. But in our talk at the hospital she had hinted at blackmail—and blackmailers are ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... "How do I know? Blackmail? Graft? I can't call the dope. But listen here! Don't forget that it ain't Quint who wants it. It's the big feller behind him who's backin' him. It's some swell guy higher up who's payin' Quint. And Quint, he pays us. So where's ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... way for all the clues we have picked up. Suppose Sir Horace's return from Scotland was due to a message from a lady friend; suppose the lady went to see him accompanied by a friend whom Sir Horace did not like—a friend of whom Sir Horace was jealous. Suppose they asked for money—blackmail—and there was a quarrel in which Sir Horace was shot. Then we have your idea as to how the lady's handkerchief was torn—I agree with that in the main. The lady and her friend fled from the place. Later in the night the place is burgled by some one who has had his eye on ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... the Senate on Tuesday and move your vote of want of confidence and object to our concession, and when you have resumed your seat the Secretary of Mines will rise in his turn and tell the Senate how you stole out here in the night and tried to blackmail me, and begged me to bribe you to be silent, and that you offered to throw over your friends and to take all that we would give you and keep it yourself. That will make you popular with your friends, and will show ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... when I left Godfrey. I expected that he would want to take some sort of legal proceedings against Bob Power which would have involved us all in a great deal of unpleasantness. I should not have been surprised if he had tried to blackmail Bob or Conroy, or both, and I should have disliked that very much. But his letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed to be merely foolish. In the first place Bob Power was not smuggling. In the next place the Chancellor of the Exchequer would never see ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... protect the civil rights of some citizens, why, they asked, was it pushing so hard for a civil rights bill? The fact was, several legislators argued, the Department of Defense was interfering with the civil rights of businessmen and practicing a crude form of economic blackmail.[21-72] ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... and in conjunction with some mandarins of high rank, levied a system of blackmail upon the Chinese coasting junks that brought them—not the junks—in money very rapidly, and Hayes's daring attack on and capture of a nest of other and real pirates procured for him a good standing with the Chinese authorities. Peese soon got into trouble, however, and when a number ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... "Blackmail. He was too smart. He'd been sure Grundy was smuggling the stuff, and raking off from him. He didn't care who killed Hendrix as much as how much Grundy would pay to keep his mouth shut—with murder around, he figured ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... papers and put them into my pocket. I did not then feel, nor have I since been able to understand, all the indignation which has been poured on Lord Clive's head for this artifice, by which a treacherous, overreaching scoundrel was robbed of the blackmail he had tried to extort. As to the charge which has been made against that great man of having caused Admiral Watson's name to be forged to the second treaty, I can only say that it was the general opinion at the time that the gallant ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Upton says, that he was the last to see your brother. Briefly, he believes the boy did meet with some misadventure that night in town; that he had been ill-treated or intimidated by some unscrupulous person or persons; perhaps threatened with blackmail; at any rate imbued with the conviction that he is not more sinned against than sinning. That, I think, is only what one expects of these very conscientious characters, particularly in youth; he was taking something or somebody a thousandfold more seriously than a grown man would have done. ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... got out of gear and flashed through these thoughts until, unable to check it in any way, she burst into tears. She felt the self-deception of such plans with physical pain. What was that money in the bank at Florence but blackmail gathered in during Sir David's life? "Why cannot I be straight even now?" she whispered. She was still sitting on the couch with one leg drawn up under her, gazing intently at the ground. No, the only money she possessed was L2000 invested at 31/2 per ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... tolerably valuable bag, and would often fall a prey to the highwaymen which infest many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... had occasion to use a record that related to a private conversation or agreement. Then it concerned a matter involving a large sum, a demand having been made upon him that smacked of blackmail. He arranged a meeting, which his opponent regarded as an indication that he was willing to yield. There were present the contestant, his lawyer, Thor's counsel ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... pig from Calandrino, make him try the ordeal with ginger boluses and sack and give him (instead of the ginger) two dogballs compounded with aloes, whereby it appeareth that he himself hath had the pig and they make him pay blackmail, and he would not have them ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... forgotten lesson that "the whole art and science of government consists in being honest." With a back door to every ordinance that touched the lives of the people, if indeed the whole thing was not the subject of open ridicule or the vehicle of official blackmail, it seemed as if we had provided a perfect municipal machinery for bringing the law into contempt with the young, and so for wrecking citizenship by ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... saw it all. It was like a story from a magazine. He had never believed those things could be true. But here it was in real life. A frame-up—a dirty piece of blackmail. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... Esther. "She is half crazy. Don't you see she is? She might have had a hundred reasons. She might have thought if he tried to steal it he'd get caught, and she could blackmail him." ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... towards the General—' and I don't suppose for a minute that he'd be guilty even of dreaming of such a piece of rascality as this. It's much more likely to be some pettifogging lawyer's game—some sneaking rogue that's got these fellow-rascals round him, with an idea of doing a little bit of blackmail. Stubbs is a decent fellow—for a lawyer. I don't think Stubbs would have a finger in that sort of pie, any more than his master. But Stubbs has been got at; that's how it'll turn out, you bet. Keep your pecker up, James,' he added, in a tone ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... dimly, but sincerely, the epic march of the American pioneer I had tried to express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manuscript printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile confirmed me ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... me to pay thirty shillings for my ticket, instead of one pound. Although the price one pound is printed on the ticket, I couldn't get it until I had paid ten shillings extra. There was no time to get a proper explanation, so I want you to do so. Very likely it is sheer blackmail by that man in the booking-office, whom I never cared for. You had better see the station-master ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... landlords of their houses, the newspapers which advertize them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], and you get a large ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... I have to be interested. I am perfectly sure this dreadful creature, Hugh Gordon, is at the bottom of the whole business, that these charges in the papers this morning are nothing but revenge for his failure to blackmail Mr. Brand, and it is just as certain as can be that he has got Mr. Brand imprisoned somewhere, maybe drugged, and the thing for you to do now is to find this Gordon and make him tell where Felix is. Oh, please do!" she ended, with a sudden ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... story I asked myself, Could Charles' conduct be dictated by the desire to have a hold over Benson—with a view to blackmail later on? But he was not likely to risk his own neck by becoming an accomplice in the concealment of the murdered man's body! Charles, if he were innocent himself, must have thought that Benson was the murderer. It was ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... ain't smart enough to know that fer him to go to his old man an' tell the whole yarn 'ud be cheapest in the run. The old man 'ud be mad at Rip, but the old man's a lawyer, an' 'ud know how to lay down the blackmail ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... feast of St. John the Baptist. While Robert was watching Stirling, his brother Edward devastated the country round Carlisle, lording it for three days at the bishop's castle of Rose, and levying heavy blackmail on ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... and Morris recovered from the shock of Goldman's disclosure they vied with each other in the strength of their resolutions not to move into Sam Slotkin's loft. "I wouldn't pay it not one cent blackmail neither," Abe declared, "not if they kept it up the ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... nobody of any common sense thought of spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange drum was beaten loudly enough. It was ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... the fact that the author's praise in a previous work had notoriously been a thing of bargain and sale, and that there was in full process of development a train of facts which led the Parisian courts to find him guilty of demanding in one case a blackmail of fifty thousand rubles. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... characteristic end for the Don Juan of the nineteenth century. Perhaps she loved the big, bearded man whose photograph she had once shown me. He killed himself for not having enough money to live as he wished to live. That was her explanation. I think there was some blackmail; she had to pay some money to the dead man's relations for letters. These sensual American women are like orchids, and who would hesitate between an orchid and a rose? It was twenty years ago since she turned round on me in the gloom of her brougham unexpectedly, and it ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to hold your position," retorted the girl, "and now, by threats of blackmail you prevent me from exposing you—you are ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... scandalous is the interrelation of the armament firms[11] which has developed the world's trade in munitions and explosives into one obscene cartel; so cynical is the avidity with which their agents exchange their trade secrets, sell ships and guns, often by means of diplomatic blackmail, to friend or foe alike, and follow those pioneers of civilisation the missionary, the gin merchant and the procurer,[12] into the wildest part of the earth; so absurd on the face of it is the practice of allowing ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... series of events in the life of some person or persons in which the diction is elevated, the movement solemn and stately, and the catastrophe sad; a kind of drama of a lofty or mournful cast, dealing with the dark side of life and character." Richard Harding Davis's "Blackmail" is a ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... be substantiated. I spoke of George a moment ago for a very good reason. I am afraid of him. He has been going down hill pretty fast of late. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that he had sunk low enough to attempt blackmail." ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... taxed with being a married man, "As I have a soul to be saved," swore he, "I am not, nor ever was!" The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lordship, as appeared, ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... American would be to keep on the side-lines and preserve an open mind. But it is not a fair fight. To devastate a country you have sworn to protect, to drop bombs upon unfortified cities, to lay sunken mines, to levy blackmail by threatening hostages with death, to destroy cathedrals is not ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... the situation. George was embarrassed and not a little nervous about it; for although he had never misrepresented his attitude to the family, one could never feel entirely free from the possibility of blackmail in such cases. However, Lizette's father behaved decently, and was duly grateful for the moderate sum of money which George handed him in parting. He promised to break the news gently to Lizette, and George ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... alarming to me after all. Why, for instance, do you fear those letters—this scoundrel Lang's confession? Kill him. Let the letter come to Adare. Cannot Josephine swear that she is innocent? Can she not have a story of her own showing how foully Lang tried to blackmail her into a crime? Would not Adare believe her word before that of a freebooter? And am I not here to swear—that the ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... man remained-motionless, staring up. The word "blackmail" resumed its buzzing in Mr. Ventnor's ears. The impudence the consummate impudence of it from this fraudulent old ruffian with one foot in bankruptcy and one foot in the grave, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Vienna. The journey was not without danger, for a large portion of this part of Europe was under no settled government, each petty baron living in his own castle, and holding but slight allegiance to any feudal lord, making war upon his neighbour on his own account, levying blackmail from travellers, and perpetually at variance with the burghers of the towns. The hills were covered with immense forests, which stretched for many leagues in all directions, and these were infested by wolves, bears, and robbers. The latter, ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... which does not exist in England. The method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail. ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... riff-raff had been inadvertently enrolled in the native police force, and received heavy sentences for theft, blackmail, and violent abuse of their functions. Indeed it took nearly a couple of years to weed out the disreputable members of this body. The total army forces in the Islands amounted to about 70,000 men, and at the end ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... I tired of it and tried to end it. Then she used it to blackmail me for ten years, till, in desperation, I came to America, to see if I couldn't ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... with passion. "So this is all the desperate attempt of a felon to levy blackmail upon ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... fortified it. For three days their homes were given over to plunder, and the enemy demanded one thousand marks as the price of a promise not to burn the town altogether. Even the Archbishop urged the townsmen to pay this blackmail lest further damage should be done, but such a sum could not be raised in a moment, and during either this or a subsequent visit the Scots did much damage to the church. The prebends suffered to the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Ripon - A Short History of the Church and a Description of Its Fabric • Cecil Walter Charles Hallett
... the equivalent of five hundred sterling in blackmail. I am afraid it will be a long time," ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... "But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... early sins by making those names in after years a terror to the invaders of their native land: but as yet their prowess was limited to drunken brawls and faction-fights; to upsetting old women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on the high road, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to return the packet; the sender was to be under his thumb, bound to his service by the terrifying recollection of the question he had written down. You know the sort of things that wealthy and powerful personages would be likely to ask. This blackmail brought him in a ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... silhouette of his antagonist with a tense set of his jaws. Many plans were revolving in his mind. Moralists might have labelled them "blackmail," but Lars Larssen was utterly free from scruples where his own interests were concerned. Honesty with him was a mere matter of policy. To a man with the average sense of honour, such an attitude of mind ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... a man to keep still, make it worth his while—but don't say anything to him about it. That opens the way to blackmail. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... object of your visit is blackmail?" he said. "You will fail in this, as you will also fail in your effort to force Mr. Gorham's hand. You have been ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... absolutely deprive the ruled, and by the assertion of the individual rights of chiefs. Sultans, rajahs, maharajahs, datus, etc., under ordinary circumstances have been and still are in most of the unprotected States unable to control the chiefs under them, who have independently levied taxes and blackmail till the harassed cultivators came scarcely to care to possess property which might at any time be seized. Forced labor for a quarter of the laboring year was obligatory on all males, besides military service when ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... resume of the outrages perpetrated upon me and mine, and must refer you for disgraceful details to my agent, Mr. Peleg Peterson of Whitefield, —— Co., ——. Hoping that you will not add to the injury you have already inflicted, by further complicity in this audacious scheme of fraud and blackmail, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... chance, he killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the little towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him, with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... "palmers" from proceeding by land. If this course be continued, a very few years will see the venerable institution represented by only the Mahmal and its guard. The late Sa'id Pasha of Egypt once consigned the memorial litter per steam-frigate to Jeddah: the innovation saved Ghafr ("blackmail") to the Bedawin; but it was not approved of by ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... suspected that they were playing this double game that he issued secret orders that there should be no more grinding. For he knew that the same men who bribed him to allow them to grind would also pay blackmail to the insurgents for a like permission. He did not dare openly to forbid the grinding, but he instructed his officers in the field to visit those places where grinding was in progress and to stop it by some indirect means, such as by declaring that the ...
— Cuba in War Time • Richard Harding Davis
... left of "Louise Moreau." Natalie's lip curls as she fathoms the motive of the girl's disappearance. Friends of Marie Berard's have probably secreted her, as a part of the old scheme of blackmail upon her. Did the secret die with her? It is fight now. She muses: "Now they may keep her. The seal of the grave is on the only lips which could tell the story of Lagunitas." Villa Rocca even, does not know who the child was! ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage |
