"Fleeced" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... "And you fleeced them? No?" muttered Don Ignacio, with an envious glimmer from his greedy eye, as if no one had a right to rob ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Blunt's long expected ruin, and a spicy court-martial or two, furnished a running accompaniment to Anstruther's expensive "personally conducted tour" into the intricacies of ecarte, led on by the coolest safety player who ever fleeced a griffin. Truly these were golden moments. The Major's cool steady eyes were ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... balcony, and drank deep draughts of air from the sea. 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! ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... 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 he votes for ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... our friend Bob: "he is now in the honourable situation of croupier to one of the most notorious hells in the metropolis. This poor devil was once a master tailor of some respectability, until getting connected with a gang of sharpers, he was eventually fleeced of all his little property: his good-natured qualifications, and the harmless pleasantries with which he abounds, pointed him out as a very proper person to act as a confederate to the more wealthy legs; from a pigeon he became a bird ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... dear child, who is he, shorter by a head than Agamemnon son of Atreus, but broader of shoulder and of chest to behold? His armour lieth upon the bounteous earth, and himself like a bell-wether rangeth the ranks of warriors. Yea, I liken him to a thick-fleeced ram ordering a great ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... for that he still 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 ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... bottom of the chest, which, now I think of it, I never turned over. I 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
... silver, and with a precious stone, and was worth eighty or a hundred guineas. 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... have selected for a career, it will not be long before you will be in demand as a bunko-steerer. You would be invaluable, with that innocent face of yours, in roping in strangers to a robbers' roost, where they would be fleeced and thrown down stairs on their necks. With about two days more experience on a slot machine, some gold-brick swindler will come along and raise the syndicate out on your salary, and put you on the road selling gold bricks. Starting in business as a fakir, ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... suspicions and a can opener | |convinced Andrew Sherrer last Saturday | |that he had been fleeced out of $500 by | |two clever manipulators of an ancient | |"get-something-for-nothing" swindle. So | |strong was the victim's confidence, ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... that you have not considered the ignoble aspect of the fleeced," said Vernon. "I appeal to the ladies: would they not, if they beheld an ostrich walking down a Queen's Drawing Room, clean-plucked, despise him though ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the beginning of philosophy;" that he had sense enough to know that the God described by the Catholics and Protestants of his day was simply an impossible monster; and that he also had the brain to see that the little selfish heaven occupied by a few monks and nuns and idiots they had fleeced, was hardly worth going to; in other words, that he was a man of common sense, greatly in advance of his time, and that he did what he could to increase the sum of human enjoyment to the end that there might be more happiness in ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... for a very good reason, as I tell you. But I'm sorry for him. I do believe he can't see that he's being fleeced. He made me promise not to utter a word of it to the Doctor, so I really don't ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... plunder. The peace had only let these wretches loose on the peasants. Some had seized castles, whence they could plunder travellers; others roamed the country, preying on the miserable peasants, who, fleeced as they were by king, barons, and clergy, were tortured and murdered by these ruffians, so that many lived in holes in the ground that their dwellings might not attract attention. Bertrand du Guesclin offered the king to relieve the country from these Free Companies ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he spoke, he produced a black dress from a grass bag, which was carried by an attendant. This dress was very curious. It fastened in front with buttons of horn, and either was, or seemed to be, woven in a single piece from the softest hair of black-fleeced goats. Moreover, it had sleeves just long enough to leave the hands of the wearer visible, and beneath its peaked cap was a sort of mask with three slits, two for the eyes ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... gather that you put Miss Raven in possession of the facts. 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
... expect to win, and nine-tenths of them are bound in the end to be fleeced out of all they possess. Why men who have brains will throw away good money in this fashion is more ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... high Mount Pelion raught,[295] Ill ways by rough seas wondering waves first taught; Which rashly 'twixt the sharp rocks in the deep, Carried the famous golden-fleeced sheep. O would that no oars might in seas have sunk! The Argo[296] wrecked had deadly waters drunk. Lo, country gods and know[n] bed to forsake Corinna means, and dangerous ways to take. For thee the East and West winds make me pale, With icy Boreas, and the Southern gale. ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... which they had acquired in ways that invited research, had started a freight-line from Medora to Deadwood, but its service turned out to be spasmodic, depending somewhat on the state of Medora's thirst, on the number of "suckers" in town who had to be fleeced, and on the difficulty under which both Williams and Hogue seemed to suffer of keeping sober when they were released from their obvious duties in the saloon. There appeared to be every reason, therefore, why a stage-line connecting Deadwood ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... it doesn't bother your sense of legality that those trials were all held in my absence," Jason asked. "Or that I have only fleeced casinos and gamblers—who make their living ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... set in sad array Proved how his victims he had fleeced and shorn Approach and read (if thou canst read) my lay, Writ on him more in sadness ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks; the swift stag from underground Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose As plants; ambiguous between sea and land, The river-horse and scaly crocodile. At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... 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 ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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 ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... enemy. Like many other such gay moths, he had been severely singed by fluttering into the dazzling lights held up to him, when he wanted money, by the two usurers; and he had often vowed revenge against them for the manner in which they had fleeced him. Sir Francis did not usually give any great heed to his threats, being too much accustomed to reproaches and menaces from his victims to feel alarm or compunction; but just now the case was different, and he ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... drugged while having a friendly game of chance with men he deemed to be respectable. One of them dosed his liquor, while another rooked him with loaded dice, and what with one thing and another he was fleeced of all his cash, and was hocussed ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... 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
... when he arrives, Doctors taking human lives. He will see a learned judge Whose decision will not budge Till both litigants are fleeced And his palm is duly greased. Lawyers he will see who fight Day by day and night by night; Never both upon a side, Though their fees they still divide. Preachers he will see who teach That it is divine to preach— That ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... where boys were taken-in and done-for by Mr. Squeers, an arrogant, conceited, puffing, overbearing and ignorant schoolmaster, who fleeced, beat, and starved the boys, but taught them nothing.—C. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... teach out in these parts, is it? and the 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
... nefarious agreement to sell out all the Clark equity in the Field which John Clark had executed prior to his departure for the Grand Army Reunion, and which Judge Orcutt had forced the elder Bright to produce, was evidence enough that the little girl needed some strong defender if she were not to be fleeced utterly of her property. For she was heir now to nearly three fourths of what the Clark estate might bring, and her aunt to the remaining portion—so said the law. But who could be found, modern knight, honest and disinterested and able enough to take upon ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... 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
... guess what ailed Joseph, and kept him restless all night. He imagined the tale the bourgeoisie of Issoudun would tell of him. They would say he had fleeced his uncle; that he was everything but what he had tried to be,—a loyal fellow and an honest artist! Ah! he would have given his great picture to have flown like a swallow to Paris, and thrown his uncle's paintings at Max's nose. To be the one robbed, and to be ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... place for a residence longer than is necessary. I was here fleeced more infamously than at any other ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... faith, ridiculing the 'new religion' of Akbar, and especially ridiculing Faizi and Abulfazl, to whom he applied nicknames expressing his sense of their pretensions. But at a later period he had occasion to make the pilgrimage to Mekka, and there he was so fleeced by the priests that his attachment to Islam insensibly cooled down. On his return to Agra, he became a member of the Divine Faith. He wrote poetry well, and was remarkable for the ease of his address and his intelligence. One of his many aphorisms has descended ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... him, but felt that if she had ground to fear resentment, it was not Mossup's but his. Wilkinson had manners, but she knew he did not like to be robbed of an easy victim, and it was possible that he had let Bob win until he was drunk enough to be fleeced. She waited a few moments to let the others go, and then went upstairs and stopped in a passage that led to her room. Her face was hot and she breathed fast, for her part in the scene had cost her something. It would ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... exclaimed 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 ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... 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 a matrimonial alliance, but Druce expressed ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... all in telling the truth to one's own country: Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a people who, with the great words 'liberty' and 'fraternity' in its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which none would ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... on 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 his way ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... from a fog-spotted sea and glared wrathfully at the wreaths of low-lying mist which obscured his vision of the saw-toothed peaks of El Diablo. Under the warmth of his gaze, the white-fleeced clouds wavered, shifting about uncertainly. As if loath to leave the devil-island they had guarded throughout the long night, they contracted slowly, niggardly exposing a line of rugged cliffs which shone bleak and gray in the strengthening light ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Barabanoff's. He and 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 trick. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... 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 ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... Vides ut Alta Stet. "White is the mountain, fleeced in snows, And the pale trees ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... the man said. "The army will soon be on the march in that direction, and my fate there would be worse than here. Here I am only an innkeeper to be fleeced; there I should be regarded as a heretic to be burnt. Listen to them. They are fighting now. Do you hear my mugs crashing?. I only hope that they will kill each other to the last man. I should advise you, sir, to be off at once. They may take it into their heads that ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... 1871.—Passed a very crowded population, the men calling to us to land to be fleeced and insulted by way of Mahonga or Mutuari: they threw stones in rage, and one, apparently slung, lighted close to the canoe. We came on until after dark, and landed under a cliff to rest and cook, but a crowd came ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... got for it was exhausted I should be sure to drop into something. I took my darling to Italy, lived in splendid style, and then, when there was nothing left but a couple of hundred pounds, we came back to England and boarded with my wretched father-in-law, who fleeced us finely. I went to London and tried in vain to get employment; and on my return, my little girl burst into a storm of lamentations, blaming me for the cruel wrong of marrying her if I could give her nothing but poverty and misery. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... wittier, and kept the Alderman in such roars of laughter that he could scarcely swallow his oysters. At length Franklin told a story of a man by the name of Maroney, who had come to the city, and getting into rather questionable company, had been fleeced of quite a large amount of money. He had sought Franklin's aid in ferreting out the thieves, but finding it would be necessary to disclose his name and the circumstances in which he was robbed, and that the facts would find their way into the daily papers, he concluded to bear the loss ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... Maybe it's a lunatic, or some poor fellow whom Muchmore has fleeced out of all his money ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... was the money-lender 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 ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... fails to be the case, that our stupid servants have let out the fires, 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 but ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Bright with the broad rose-blossoms. I have seen Many a fallen convent reverend in decay, And many a time have trod the castle courts And grass-green halls, yet never did they strike Home to the heart such melancholy thoughts As this poor cottage. Look, its little hatch Fleeced with that grey and wintry moss; the roof Part mouldered in, the rest o'ergrown with weeds, House-leek and long thin grass and greener moss; So Nature wars with all the works of man. And, like himself, ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... 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, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... old woman's unreasonable complaint that she was an encumbrance to her had eaten deeply into the child's mind. During the last year she had been a waitress for some time at a sailors' tavern down in Nyhavn with an innkeeper Elleby, the confidence-man who had fleeced Pelle on his first arrival in the city. It was Elleby's custom to adopt young girls so as to evade the law and have women-servants for his sailors; and they generally died in the course of a year or two: he always wore a crape band round his sleeve. Johanna was also ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... slanting down The second bar. Thereover strode A Wether, fleeced in burning brown, And largely ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... 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 Anisya'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 Anisya's money and skin him. That's what the bank is. So it goes round and round. It's a cute thing, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... waves, over the vine-lands of sunny France, in among the shadows of the storied Pyrenees. Sorrow and sighing have fled away. Tragedy no longer "in sceptred pall comes sweeping by"; but young lambs leap in wild frolic, silken-fleeced sheep lie on the slopes of the hills, and shepherd calls to shepherd from his mountain-peak. Peaceful hamlets lie far down the valley, and every gentle height blooms with a happy home. Dark-eyed Basque girls dance through the fruitful orchards. I see the gleam of their ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... English; he asked for a night's rest in the town for himself and his men. From the heights of the ramparts he was politely requested to pass on; and, in case he should be tempted to force an entry, a sum of money was offered him.[803] Thus the citizens fleeced themselves for fear of being robbed. In like manner, only a few days before Jeanne's coming, they had given the Scot, Kennedy, who was ravaging the district, two hundred livres to go on. When they had got rid of their defenders, their next care was ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... of anvil and strife. "The wooing kestrel," I said, "mutes his mating-note To please the harmony of this sweet silence." And when at the day's end We laid tired bodies 'gainst The loose warm sands, And the air fleeced its particles for a coverlet; When star after star came out To guard their lovers in oblivion— My soul so leapt that my evening ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... 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 it. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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. On the other hand, fragile creatures ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... fleeced of a yearly contribution, of doubtful advantage to the receiver, for forty years or sixty, what particular economic laws decree that Poles should be governed by Germans or vice-versa, whose honour or profit demands the possession of the town of Fiume or the district of Tetschen ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... he deserved that his sun should set in an unclouded sky, this was not to be. Sorrows of a most intimate nature crowded upon him. He was also made the victim of a conscienceless swindler who fleeced him of many thousand dollars, and, to crown all, his old and indefatigable enemy, F.O.J. Smith, administered a cowardly thrust in the back when his weakening powers prevented him from defending himself ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... as they doubtless said. The Colonel, as all the town knows, is a notorious capper and steerer, and the fellow Brady is no better, no worse. Had you stayed with them and suffered them to persuade you into betting, you would soon have been fleeced as clean as a shaved pig. The little gains they are permitted to make, to draw you on, is their pay. Their losses if any would have been restored to them, but ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... observes "the present establishment of St. Cross is but the wreck of its two ancient institutions; it having been severely fleeced, though not quite destroyed, like so many other hospitals at the Reformation. Instead of seventy residents, as well clergy as laity, who were here entirely supported, besides one hundred out-members, who daily received their meat and drink, the charity consists at present but of ten ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... prosecuting a captured brigand, for a criminal or civil lawsuit in the Philippines was one of the worst calamities that could befall a man. Between notaries, procurators, barristers, and the sluggish process of the courts, a litigant was fleeced of his money, often worried into a bad state of health, and kept in horrible suspense for years. It was as hard to get the judgement executed as it was to win the case. Even when the question at issue was supposed to be settled, a defect in the sentence could always be ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... or lower grade; the man with the pick and shovel, a mighty and ever-shifting army—English navvy, Irish canaller, Chinese coolie, Swede or Italian or Ruthenian—housed in noisome bunkhouses, often fleeced by employment agent or plundering sub-contractor, facing sudden death by reckless familiarity with dynamite or slower death by typhoid and dysentery; the men who carried on the humdrum work of every day, ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... his arm, are killed by a wicked woman who wants her daughter to take their mother's place as queen. They turn first into two golden pear-trees. These are destroyed by fire, but one glowing coal from the fire is eaten by an old she-goat. The old goat then has two little golden-fleeced kids. They are killed, an old crow swallows a piece of the entrails as they are being washed in the brook; she flies to the seventy-seventh island in the ocean, builds a nest and lays two golden eggs. Out of the eggs come the golden-haired ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... cash reserves are not in their own hands, but in the pockets of a few millionaires who, bewildered by their luck, and unspeakably incapable of making any truly economic use of it, endeavor to "do good" with it by letting themselves be fleeced by philanthropic committee men, building contractors, librarians and professors, in the name of education, science, art and what not; so that sensible people exhale relievedly when the pious millionaire dies, and his heirs, demoralized by being brought up on his outrageous ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... insisted that he did not wish anything for himself. He would scorn to accept a cent for his influence, and would feel everlastingly disgraced to take a farthing from a constituent. He was only anxious to serve me and have me fleeced as little as possible. Of course, I believed him. In proof of my confidence, I immediately handed over $2,000 to his custody, in convenient packages for distribution. The same day my bill was read in place and referred to the committee on corporations! ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... party arrived, bringing 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 ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... Italian states. But the great mass of Italians had only extorted it by rebellion during the boyhood of Caesar, and outside Italy, the conquered nations were still on the footing of subject allies, trampled upon and fleeced for the benefit of Rome, or rather of the Roman nobles and capitalists. If the great dominion was to be maintained in some tolerable degree of well-being for all its members, or even maintained at all, it was absolutely necessary that the so-called ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... judged they were asleep, Lucian being so feeble and Julian so full. The office was open but empty. Its clock read two. The card-tables were vacant. The bar was closed. Out on the dim boiler deck he found only the two who had fleeced Basile. They sat at the very front, elbow to elbow, with their feet up on the rail. Their quiet talk ceased as he came near and stood looking out over the gliding bow and the waters beyond, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... permanent and resident clergyman, with a roof over his head, "be it ever so humble;" but no, the parish is but the receptacle for the luckless, roaming deacon, and its poor parishioners are ever doomed to be as sheep without a shepherd, and to be fleeced accordingly. ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... 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 southeast and then we knew we were to take the ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... and so ever and 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, all circled the great Abbey round with ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... servant did not listen to him, and thought, "You have fleeced people often enough, now the thorn-bushes shall do the same to you;" and he began to play over again, so that the Jew had to jump higher than ever, and scraps of his coat were left hanging on the thorns. "Oh, woe's me! cried the Jew; I will give the gentleman ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... be fleeced, shorn, ruined," implied Mr. Dymock, "if I go to make a bargain, without a grain of common ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... 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, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... I suppose; and Edmund Grosse says that the boy from the Parsonage has lost any amount to Billy. They have fleeced him in the most ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... know how to begin," muttered the novelist whose puppets' speeches had always been so apt. "Last night you sent me on a sort of—quest for the golden fleece. I didn't know who had been fleeced, or what the idea was. But I fared forth, as they say. I got it ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... the fanatic and the "easy mark" of to-day are seldom aware of any of these things, and so they are bled, fleeced, and exploited accordingly. "All is Mind!" "Great is Elijah!" or "Mrs." Elijah, and Oahspe is his Prophet! while Babel reigns in the place ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... Warrington, some other person 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
... to misinterpret Nature if we start with the assumption that her methods are at all like our methods. We pick out our favorites among plants and animals, those that best suit our purposes. If we want wool from the sheep, we select the best-fleeced animals to breed from. If we want mutton, we act accordingly. If we want cows for quantity of milk, irrespective of quality, we select with that end in view; if we want butter-fat, we breed for that end, ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... where the casements, larger and freer than the branch-screened lattice of his own apartment, admitted unimpeded the dark-blue, the silver-fleeced, the stirring and sweeping vision of the autumn night-sky. He carried no candle; unneeded was lamp or fire. The broad and clear though cloud-crossed and fluctuating beam of the moon shone on every ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... the bloom of manhood on Your youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece was none Your fervent limbs with flickers and tendrils of new Knowledge; I set your heart to its stronger beat; I put my strength upon you, and I threw My life ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... people bring their griefs and malcontentments to me. It's not so pleasant to be bored by them, let alone the policy of my listening to all they have to say. But the ill humour of these poor fleeced people must have a vent, or sfogo, as the Italians term it, and what can I do? An intelligent merchant came to me. "Yâkob, bisslamah, (how do you fare?) The Rais is always collecting money, don't you see? That's the business of the Turks. This city is ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 in 1752 he steered for Edin., where he remained on the usual happy-go-lucky terms until 1754, ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... St. Cecilia, very fair and sweet, to the eyes of the man who stood a moment unperceived beneath the arch. A figure of medium height, clad in priestly garments, with a white surplice sweeping to the marble floor; a finely modelled head thickly fleeced with light brown hair, a serene pleasant face, with regular features, deep-set black eyes magnified by spectacles, and an expression of habitual placidity, that bespoke a soul consecrated by noble aims, and at ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
