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Swindle   /swˈɪndəl/   Listen
Swindle

noun
1.
The act of swindling by some fraudulent scheme.  Synonyms: cheat, rig.



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"Swindle" Quotes from Famous Books



... we're the National Telephone Comp'ny with a reputation to lose, and if you've any ideer we want to swindle you, all I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 30, 1892 • Various

... be lived through before May 16th. Hillerton came across a half sheet of paper covered with such calculations, and was somewhat puzzled by the prominence of the figure 24. An odd price to pay for a mining stock. He was afraid it was the "Adeline Maria," a notorious swindle. Well, Peckham might as well get his lesson at the hands of the faithless Adeline Maria as by any other means. He was bound to come to grief sooner or later, but that ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... want," I said, "in small sums from a number of people, you'll be able to keep control of the thing yourself, and you needn't be afraid of Ascher. Not that I believe Ascher would swindle, you. I think Ascher's an ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... them. Cyril was right and knew that he was right. Orestes was a scoundrel, hateful to God, and to the enemies of God. The middle classes were lukewarm covetous cowards: the whole system of government was a swindle and an injustice; all men's hearts were mad with crying, 'Lord, how long?' The fierce bishop had only to thunder forth text on text, from every book of scripture, old and new, in order to array on his side not merely the common sense and right feeling, but the bigotry and ferocity ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... lidyship is in love with a gent that's not in the party at all. An American gent,' I says. They wouldn't believe it at first, but, when Keggs 'ad put two and two together, and thought of one or two things that 'ad 'appened, 'e turned as white as a sheet and said it was a swindle and wanted the drawin' done over again, but the others says 'No', they says, 'it's quite fair,' they says, and one of 'em offered me ten bob slap out for my ticket. But I stuck to it, I did. And that," concluded Albert throwing the cigarette into the fire-place ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... restore it by embarking with a gang of needy rogues on a first-class "roping" transaction, in connection with a prize-fight in Spain. Having, however, been exposed, he is shunned by most of those who only heard of the swindle when it was too late ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... these: they are the backs of my friends' letters; how astonished many of them would be if they knew that the last half sheet they write me becomes on the spot a medium for the latest full-blown accounts of a murder, or a laugh, or a swindle, perhaps, more frequently, a flirtation! I am a bad sleeper', she adds, 'I think my brain is too active, for I always plan out my best scenes at night, and write them out in the morning without any trouble'. She finds, too, that driving has a curious effect upon her; the action of the air seems ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black

... boys. They'll see that you're a youngster, and they'll help you all they can. You'll find newspaper men pretty clannish, the world over. Well, good-bye, Garfield, I won't be likely to see you again before you go. I've got that Traction Swindle to cover and there's going to be ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... sergeant was to be accorded all respect and credit, and a hack to fetch him home when his legs got as twisted as his tongue: Mrs. McGrath would be around within forty-eight hours to audit and pay the accounts. Donnelly sought to swindle the shrewd old laundress at the start, and thereby lost Mac's valuable custom for six long and anniversary-laden months. Then he came to terms, and didn't try it again for nearly two years, which was remarkable in a saloon-man. This time Donnelly was forgiven only upon restitution ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... government is ten times worse than the one we are fighting against, and every one of us was a fool for ever putting on a gray jacket. Why didn't they tell us all this in the first place, so that we might know what there was before us? It's a fraud and a cheat and a swindle and a—and a—what are you about?" he added, turning almost fiercely upon his captain, who elbowed his way through the excited group and tried to take the paper from his hand. "I'll not obey the orders of the Richmond government, ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon

... market for ironbark red, It always occurs to the Wollombi head To do a "mahogany" swindle. In forests where never the ironbark grew, When Jim is at work, it would flabbergast you To ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall

... doctor, there's only one breed that flourishes, and you don't need me to tell you which it is. Here they lie"—and he nodded to right and left of him—"dreamin' o' their money-bags, and their dividends, and their profits, and how they'll diddle and swindle one another afresh, soon as the sun gets up to-morrow. Harder 'n nails they are, and sharp as needles. You ask me why I do my walkin' out in the night-time? It's so's to avoid the sight o' their mean little eyes, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... that Mme Lacoste's handling of her fortune was careful to a degree, her expenditure being well within her income. This witness also proved that the Fourcades' evidence of Euphemie's misbehaviour could have been dictated from spite. Fourcade had been found out in what looked like a swindle over money which he owed ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure

... wipes his spectacles and feels he has been sold! This life on the other side of Jordan he finds to be what his American cousins would call a "humbug," a downright swindle upon the sympathies and good taste of those who wear long streamers of crape, and groan and sob over his funeral rites! He feels in duty bound (out of consideration for those mourners who expect nothing else) to go scudding through the air in a loose ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn

... five minutes out of this lady's presence,—of whom I beg pardon for this strong language. Mr. Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look at ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... and listening to the swindle of the flail, as it sounds dub-a-dub on the corn, from ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... I had no alternative. Of course they took care to come for that before they talked of my resigning. I believe it was all planned beforehand. The whole thing seems to me to have been a swindle from beginning to end. By heaven, I'm almost inclined to think that the Duchess ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... that I have been an impostor palmed upon you, that there has been a plot and conspiracy to rob you, and that I have a mother who not only did this, but who could propose to me to go on deceiving you, and even to join in a fresh fraud and to swindle Rupert, is so awful that there is nothing for me to ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty

... morning and afternoon in the Kurpark. Many continental health resorts support themselves by placing a tax upon visitors, a practice resorted to by no English town, and so I regard the imposition as a swindle, and I refuse to advertise any place that practises it. It is true that if you stay in Schwindleburg less than a week they do not tax you, but I didn't know that, and the hotel man, being wise ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... gave half-hourly lectures on the other in an adjoining room - I, as his lieutenant, taking turns. The thing was in its way a little triumph. A few of the visitors were deaf, and hugged the belief that they were the victims of a new kind of fancy-fair swindle. Of the others, many who came to scoff remained to take raffle tickets; and one of the phonographs was finally disposed of in this way, falling, by a happy freak of the ballot-box, into the hands of Sir William Thomson.' The other remained in Fleeming's hands, and was a source of infinite ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... republic, black and white, male and female. Mrs. Mott was chosen President, resolutions were reported, and when everything was in fine working order (except the furnace) Mr. Pomeroy slipped off to his senatorial duties, to watch the grand Kansas swindle now on the tapis, and to protect, if possible, the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... was examining the card, his visitor was forming in his mind a plan of procedure. He had come there with a carefully concocted lie on his tongue to swindle the sharpest lawyer in Scranton out of enough money ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... I came a cropper over that accursed cotton swindle I've not had any inclination to meet any one I knew—especially any one in the Service, but"—and his voice rang honestly, "I always wondered whether you and I would ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... over in your mind, younker, you'll see that this bus'ness can't be put through without giving the scamps the chance to swindle us the worst sort of way. They won't give up the boy on our promise to pay 'em the money and no questions asked, for they don't b'leve we'll do it; so we've got to give 'em the money and trust to their honor to keep their part. Trust to their ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis

... a very successful circus. Everyone enjoyed it and wished to see it again—everyone but the Maloneys. They said it was a swindle, and ran Dad down because he did n't divide with Paddy the 3s. 6d. he took at ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... wonder the women of the country-side, rather than waste three precious hours in arguments about a few cheeses, will smuggle them past the authorities under the device of being enceintes; no wonder their wisest old men regard the paternal government as a successfully organized swindle, which it is the citizen's bounden duty to frustrate whenever possible. Have you ever tried to convey—in legal fashion—a bottle of wine from one town into another; or to import, by means of a sailing-boat, an old frying-pan into some village by the sea? It is a fine art, only to ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... economy which is called political teaches us the most adequate, the most economical way of satisfying our needs, whether these needs are rational or irrational, beautiful or ugly, moral or immoral—a business economically good may be a swindle, something that in the long run kills the soul—and the supreme human need is the need of not dying, the need of enjoying for ever the plenitude of our own individual limitation. And if the Catholic eucharistic doctrine teaches that the substance of the body of Jesus ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... any such transaction, if it is only on a large scale. We cannot bear small and insignificant dishonesties, but take off our hats and bow almost to the ground in the presence of the man who has made one hundred thousand dollars by one swindle. A woman was arrested in the streets of one of our cities for selling molasses candy on Sunday. She was tried, condemned, and imprisoned. Coming out of prison, she went into the same business and sold molasses candy on Sunday. Again she was arrested, condemned, and imprisoned. On coming ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... brought on a collision, and although the Englishmen might have fought, there was nothing to gain by a fight. Everything depended on swiftness of action, and Hindhaugh determined grimly that if rapidity could do anything he would teach the "furriners" a lesson for trying to swindle him. ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various

... travellers regard such men as swindlers; but for my own part I have found them very useful. When I first visited Antwerp I employed one. I found him intelligent and gentlemanly, and, so far as I could judge, not disposed to swindle me himself or to let others do so. I paid him five francs a day, and I am sure he saved me more money than I paid him, besides taking me in the easiest and most convenient way to the various ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic

... to compliment me, Sir?" asked Mr. Burt. "You've got some kind of subscription paper, I suppose." The old gentleman began to warm up as he thought of it. "But I can't give any thing. I never do—I never will. It's an infernal swindle. Some deuced Missionary Society, or Tract Society, or Bible Society, some damnable doing-good society, that bleeds the entire community, has sent you up here, Sir, to suck money out of me with your smooth face. They're always at it. They're always sending boys, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... Wyatt on his way to the nets. The notice concerning the holiday had only been given out that morning, and he was full of it. He expressed his opinion of the headmaster freely and in well-chosen words. He said it was a swindle, that it was all rot, and that it was a beastly shame. He added that something ought to be done ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse

... always saying "My house is not damp" at the moment when his house is on fire. The Englishman is always saying, "I have thrown off all traces of anaemia" in the middle of a fit of apoplexy. Let us always remember that if an Englishman wants to swindle English people, he does not dress up in the uniform of a soldier. If an Englishman wants to swindle English people he would as soon think of dressing up in the uniform of a messenger boy. Everything in England is done unofficially, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... worn out and disconsolate, gazing at a confusion of tents, sheds, and shanties, for it could be called nothing else, on the hither side of a tumbled together waste of snow and ice spreading to right and left. "Is it all a swindle or ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... is a fraud," went on the wounded soldier. "To the best of my knowledge, he comes from Philadelphia, where he used to run a mail-order medical bureau of some sort—something which the Post-office Department stopped as a swindle." ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield

... a direct front attack—fut, horse, an' guns—an' all for nothin', seem' that I had no thransport to convey the machine away. "I will not argue wid you," sez I, "this day, but subsequintly, Mister Dearsley, me rafflin' jool, we talk ut out lengthways. 'Tis no good policy to swindle the naygur av his hard-earned emolumints, an' by presint informashin'"—'twas the kyart man that tould me—"ye've been perpethrating that same for nine months. But I'm a just man," sez I, "an' overlookin' the presumpshin that yondher settee wid the gilt top was not come by honust,"—at ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling

... have formed that habit on Earth. Only they carry it further there—swindle their brothers, deceive their parents, oppress the weak, extort from the poor; work, toil, plot, cheat, rob, yes, even kill! in order to lay up a store of something they can never take away with them, and which renders ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass

... even principle goes under when it comes to friends—the right sort, I mean. This Pinkerton is frightened, and he seems sick; the medico don't seem to care a cent about his state of health; and you've got to figure how you would like it if he came to die. Remember, the risk of this little swindle is all yours; it's no sort of risk to Mr. Pinkerton. Well, you've got to put it that way plainly, and see how you like the sound of it: my friend Pinkerton is in danger of the New Jerusalem, I am in danger of San Quentin; which risk do ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... little and big—the smaller thieves thinking that they also must live, no matter at whose expense, although I demur to the proposition. Why should they stop at stealing a thousand or two, more or less, while that four hundred thousand swindle leered at them so wickedly over the left shoulder, mocking at all law and justice, and scot free from all punishment? These 'traders' could charge what sums they liked against the Indian, and get them too; for there was no one to defeat or check their rapacity. Mr. Heard tells us that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the style of conveyance to which they are thus suddenly introduced. But we tumble aboard and dispose ourselves for a miserable night. A few of us are glum, and revolve horrible thoughts; but the majority soon come to regard the matter as such a stupendous swindle as to be positively ridiculous. They accordingly grow merry as the night waxes, and make up in song what ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood

... matter? If fools and knaves elect to gamble in such palpably fraudulent ways, let them gamble, and their losses are no affair of ours. It is none of our business." But presently these honest people had it pounded into their well-meaning heads that the principal instrument by which the swindle was conducted was their own mail service, one of the most important branches of their Government; that, in fact, in each and every city, town, village, and cross-road in all our virtuous land, Government ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Brive Ah! You were going to give two hundred thousand francs as a dowry to your daughter, and you had debts to the amount of three hundred and fifty thousand! Between ourselves it looks like you who had been trying to swindle ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac

... been converting another corpse, but this time it has been able to protest by proxy, and the swindle has been exposed all along the line. Paul Bert, the great French Freethinker, died at Tonquin. The nation voted him a state funeral, and his body was shipped to France. The voyage was a long one, and it gave the pious an opportunity of leisurely converting the corpse, especially ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote

... Sweetbriar rozo sovagxa. Sweetheart (m.) amanto, fiancxo. Sweetmeat sukerajxo. Swell sxveli. Swelling sxvelo. Swerve malrektigxi. Swift rapida. Swiftness rapideco. Swill glutegi, drinkegi. Swim nagxi. Swimming nagxarto. Swimming (in head) kapturno. Swindle sxteli. Swindler sxtelisto. Swine porko. Swing balanci. Swing, a balancilo. Swiss, a Sviso. Switch vergo. Swivel turnkruco. Swoon sveni. Sword glavo. Syllable silabo. Syllogism silogismo. Symbol simbolo. Symmetry ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... be so, are untrue. On the contrary, he assures me that applications of this nature are very seldom made, and most of those that have been made have proved to come from Englishmen, who have thought they might swindle him in this form. I have had at least a dozen such applications myself, but I take it nothing is easier, in general, than to distinguish between an American and a native of Great Britain. It was agreed between us, that in future all ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... not much to do to go to the front. It was in the air to fight." He paused to let this aspect of the case sink in. "Later I was chairman of the committee that requested him to leave the Tremont Club. And still later, when his swindle on the exchange came to light, I helped his father hush the matter up. He was ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick

... "I won't, but I shall wait till I find a husband who's charming enough and bad enough. One who'll beat me and swindle me and spend my money on other women—that's the sort of man for me. Mr. Dormer, delightful as he is, ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... grasping, envious police restrictions, which destroy the freedom, and, with it, the integrity of commerce,—those who like to examine such details may find plenty in French history: the whole French finance system has been a swindle from the days of Luvois, or Law, down to the present time. The Government swindles the public, and the small traders swindle their customers, on the authority and example of the superior powers. Hence the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... has, Luiz; so I'll tell him. At least the knowledge will gravel him and take all the joy out of that stinking little spruce swindle ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... legal taxes, in order to support a party organization the sole object of which was to enrich a few at the expense of the many. One job, in especial, the contract for paving the streets, he stigmatized as a swindle, and asserted that the District Attorney, had he done his duty, would long ago have brought the Mayor and Town Council before a criminal court as parties to a notorious fraud. His ability, steadfastness, and self-restraint had had a very real effect; his meetings were always crowded, and his ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris

... was written at the time the famous swindle of the "Petrified Giant" was the sensation of the day in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... know, to talk over starting a fresh magazine. The Ronleian is a beastly swindle, and it's high time we had something different." (A voice, "No, 'tisn't," and the bursting of a paper bag.) "You shut up there! I say it is a swindle: they didn't give any account of that fourth eleven match against Robertson's second, and they made fun of us in the 'Quad Gossip,' ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery

... THE AFFLICTED. We are daily consulted by persons suffering from spermatorrhea and impotency who have been victimized by ignorant charlatans. Some seek to dupe and swindle the unwary by claiming to have themselves been cured of spermatorrhea or impotency by some prescription, which they offer to send free to any sufferer. When the prescription is obtained it is found to consist of a few articles well-known to every druggist, coupled with certain ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... "It's a swindle!" burst in Matt Lincoln indignantly. "Don't you pay a cent. Miss Bartlett. It was not your fault, and he cannot force ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer

... who had no illusions, and was in search of adventures; one of those women who frequently change their name, and who, as they have made up their minds to swindle if luck is not on their side, act a continual part, an adventuress, who could put on every accent; who for the sake of her course, transformed herself into a Slav, or into an American, or simply into a provincial; who was ready to take part in any comedy in order to make money, and not to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... made of matters which were a subject for grief and scorn. Hundreds of grown men stood by and saw that boy lose a fortune in two hours, and some forty paragraphs might have been collected in which the transaction was described in various terms as a gross swindle. A good shot was killing pigeons—gallant sport—and the wealthy schoolboy was betting. When a sign was given by a bookmaker the shooting-man obeyed, and won or lost according to orders; and every man in the assembly knew what foul work was being carried on. Did one man warn the victim? The ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... h'm.... In my opinion electric lighting is just a swindle.... They put a live coal in and think you don't see them! No, if you want a light, then you don't take a coal, but something real, something special, that you can get hold of! You must have a fire, you understand, which is natural, ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov

... veteran to strike the image with his battle-axe. The helpless statue offers no resistance. Another blow rolls the head of the idol on the floor. It is said that a colony of frightened rats ran forth from its interior. The kingcraft, and priestcraft, and solemn swindle of seven hundred years are exploded in a shout of laughter; the god is broken to pieces, his members dragged through the streets. The recesses of the Serapion are explored. Posterity is edified by discoveries of frauds by which the priests maintain their power. Among other wonders, a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... advantages, and offers a price for milk or cream markedly above the ordinary price paid for it by other creameries, you may be sure there is something illegitimate about it. It may be done to drum up business, to beat a rival, or it may be a downright swindle, it surely will not be lasting, and the operator intends at some time to recoup ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... "He wanted to swindle me," thought Andy. "It's lucky I didn't pay him five dollars. Anyway, I'll keep it. The ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... the second objection than the first," said Tempest. "I don't see why a fellow should be out of it because he's poor. If so, I can cut my lucky here. But it does seem a swindle to stick a town-boy over ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... Uncle Eb, ''tain't no swindle. Barker thought he hed a gran' good thing. He got fooled an' the fool complaint is very ketchin'. Got it myself years ago an' I've been doctorin' fer ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... house stood well, as rectories generally contrive to do. No place in Flamborough parish could hope to swindle the wind of its vested right, or to embezzle much treasure of the sun, but the parsonage made a good effort to do both, and sometimes for three days together got the credit of succeeding. And the dwellers therein, who felt the edge ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... gowns, painstakingly chosen; she kept him waiting when he called; she received him with indifference. She seemed to grow as frank with him as he with her, and often enough the frankness was genuine. She told him coolly at the outset that she knew he would swindle her out of her money if he got the chance and that he was not going to get the chance. She informed him that she did not trust him but that that need make no difference in their relations; if she became convinced that the project were safe she would go into ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory

... "It's just a swindle!" repeated Pinky. "You're an old hard-fisted money-grubber, and no better than a robber. Three dollars and a quarter for all that work! It doesn't pay for the trouble. We ought to have had ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... falsehood, therefore if he speaks falsely he commits a sin. A man knows it is wrong to become intoxicated, and yet he does become so; he has violated a known law of right and wrong, and has therefore committed a sin. Who is the man of common sense that does not know it is wrong to lie, steal, swindle, defraud, curse, drink, get angry and cross; to refuse to help a needy neighbor when he can, to talk foolishly, to tell unseemly tales, to backbite, slander, commit adultery, hold enmity against another, or to be proud ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... dishonesty Who hangs his head, and a' that? The coward slave, we pass him by, And dare to steal for a' that. For a' that and a' that, Our grabs and games, and a' that, Our business is to make a pile And swindle SAM, and ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various

... years ago jist ez she stood for 8,000 dollars. Kalkilatin' wot she cost me in repairs and taxes, and wot she brought me in since then, accordin' to my figgerin', I don't call a clear profit of 15,000 dollars much of a swindle." ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte

... nor jury seemed much interested in the convict's behaviour to the daughter of the man he had tried to swindle out of money. On the contrary, they jumped to the conclusion that his wife was morally his accomplice; and, indeed, if it had not been for her great beauty she would very likely have gone to the galleys too. There was, however, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... you you were acting childishly; this proves it. A most outrageous attempt has been made to swindle you, if I may use such a term to persons who confessedly are plotting to rob another. Surely this will convince you that you have nothing to fear from me. I am here as the agent neither of Sultan nor police. It ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... that we are in for another turn—at least the 5th Bavarian Division. Everybody has been talking about it for a long time. To the devil with it! Every Bavarian regiment is being sent into it, and it's a swindle." ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... but on my honor, as a member of the bar, the behavior of Portia was outrageous. This young female, not content with 'cavorting' around the country in a loose and perspicuous style, actually practises a gross swindle on the court. She assumes to be a man when she is only a woman, dons the breeches when she is only entitled to the skirts, and imposes herself upon the Duke of Venice as a learned young advocate from Rome, when in fact she is only a young damsel of Belmont, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and this muslin siren in the other, galloping down hill on a sympathetic mule amid songbirds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he is virtuous, condemned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the faces of missing links on tin for an honest living! 'Tis an injustice ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... up on the word. "Abused, do you say?" She laughed sharply. "Say duped, my friend; for that is what has happened to you. You are the victim of a swindle." ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... swindle me out of my eyes, if he could do so without being caught; but if he can't swindle me, he will be glad to do business with me 'on the square,' as he would ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston

... said Jim, "with those men interested. Well, our study of creameries has given a great deal of language work, a good deal of arithmetic, some geography, and finally saved the people from a swindle. Rather ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick

... in his chair and peered into the vapor that floated above his head. "Boys," said he, when he finally lowered his eyes, "I have a feeling that some one is trying to victimize this professor of yours; in other words, that evil forces are at work to swindle him out of his claim, or, perhaps, to get it in some way even more desperate. I don't want to alarm you unnecessarily, but it's the part of wisdom to consider this matter in the worst light possible, and then to go to work ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish

... of people, and on investigation was found to have been fraudulently conducted from the very beginning. John Sadleir thereupon killed himself; his brother James was expelled from the House of Commons, and he and several others implicated in the swindle fled the country and never reappeared, and so the "Brass Band" broke up, amid the well-deserved contempt of men of ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... friend, the highly revered Colonel, had also undertaken to purchase a number of horses and mules for me. "The people of Goyaz," said he, "are terrible thieves; they will swindle you if you buy them yourself. I will purchase them for you and you will then pay me back the money. By to-morrow morning," he had stated, "I shall have all the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... they say, 'as the twig's inclined, the tree is bent,'" Bristles told them, ponderously, "and we all can guess what'll become of Buck Lemington some day. He'll either make a striking figure in finance, or else head some big swindle that'll send him up ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... no doubt," returned she. "People promise you heaps of money, and when they come by their own, and there is talk of paying they swindle you like—" "Like Elie Magus," she was going to say, but she stopped herself ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... sorry to say it was in other rags, but the rags they got were new instead of old,—it was a real Aladdin bargain. The new rags had blue backs, and were numbered, some as high as fifty dollars. The rag-man had been in a hurry, and had not known what made the things so heavy. I frowned at the swindle, but they said all was fair with a pedler,—and I own I was glad the things were well out of Richmond. But when I said I thought it was a mean trick, Lizzie and Sarah looked demure, and asked what in the world I would have them do with the old things. Did I expect them to walk ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... father brought her to Chiswick as a young girl, and only a year before her father's death, and when she was sixteen years old, Miss Pinkerton majestically and with a little speech made her a present of a doll, which was, by the way, the confiscated property of Miss Swindle, discovered surreptitiously nursing it in school-hours. How the father and daughter laughed as they trudged home together after the evening party, and how Miss Pinkerton would have raged had she seen the caricature of herself which the little ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... a queer choking laugh. "Life is a big, big swindle," she said. "The only happy people in the world are those who haven't found it out. But you—you say there are other things in life besides suffering. How did you know that if—if you've ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... as at the centre of situations. All the sordid transactions of his life appear to him, and are depicted in his accounts of them, as feats, successes, proofs of his acumen. He regards it as an almost magical exploit to operate a stock-brokerage shop, or to get elected to public office, or to swindle his fellow knaves in some degrading commercial enterprise, or to profess some nonsense or other in a college, or to write so platitudinous a book as this one. And in the same way he views it as a great testimony to his prowess at amour to yield up his liberty, his property ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... allowed this swindle to go on all that time without saying a word!" said the questioner. "I am surprised, when I remember that for a long time you ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter

... dollars you got on that partnership swindle?" Burke asked, sneering. "I s'pose you ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... routine voting. Finally, the question was renewed on Butler's proposition to adopt the Cincinnati platform pure and simple. This was the red flag to the mad bull. Mississippi declared that the Cincinnati platform was a great political swindle on one half the States of the Union; and from that time on the Cotton States ceased to act as a part of the convention. As soon as a lull in the proceedings permitted, Mr. Yancey put in execution his programme of demand, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... yourself, you say? Come, calculate how small the loss per day, If henceforth to your cabbage you allow And your own head the oil you grudge them now. If anything's sufficient, why forswear, Embezzle, swindle, pilfer everywhere? Can you be sane? suppose you choose to throw Stones at the crowd, as by your door they go, Or at the slaves, your chattels, every lad And every girl will hoot yon down as mad: When with ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... during ten days it waxed more and more violent day by day. The great "Negro University Swindle" became the one absorbing topic of conversation throughout the Union. Individuals denounced it, journals denounced it, public meetings denounced it, the pictorial papers caricatured its friends, the whole nation seemed to be growing frantic over it. Meantime the Washington correspondents ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... purloin, peculate, swindle, plagiarize, poach>. (With this group, which excludes the idea of violence, compare the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... we wish to say one word," Fred remarked, calmly, yet firmly. "Ever since we have been at Ballarat, you have contrived a number of ways to swindle us of our money. What you have received we don't wish back into our pockets: but we do give you warning that hereafter, if you interfere in our affairs, we shall take the liberty of administering a sound kicking to that portion of your anatomy made to be kicked. We hope that you ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes

... two years has deprived us of this reputation. They have shown to a disappointed Europe only translators of French stucco but no original thinkers. It may be that when civil marriage also rejoices in its majority, the people will have their eyes opened to the swindle to which they have been sacrificed; when one after another the old Christian fundamental rights have been taken from them: the right to be governed by Christian magistrates; the right to know that they have ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam

... you know, brother, how the Germans in our shops swindle the gentlemen. Even if we're not Germans, but orthodox Christians, we, too, like to eat stuffed ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky

... to work and do something for themselves. But you didn't, and I couldn't see what you were trying to do. And then when Wade joined you and Father, I thought he was either helping you put over some kind of a swindle or else he'd started believing in Merlin himself. I should have seen what you were trying to do from the beginning. At least, from when you talked them into cleaning the town up and fixing the escalators and ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... now; and it was delicate business dealing with people who have only one idea in their heads, to swindle you, in order to curry favor with the managers by getting them cheap turns. They would have skinned ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... account in the heavenly books, however it may be foolishly spent or fraudulently appropriated by the payee on earth. Half a dozen of the fashionable charities are rotten, but we have not had a thorough-going swindle up to this time. We have been waiting for it ... in Lombard Street. It ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... dollar, forgot this standard of business honour when they advocated a swindling policy for the Government of the United States. In its day of trouble the Government was glad to promise gold to the people who had confidence in them, and just as gladly the Government proposed to swindle them by a silver falsehood in 1877. But the Nation was just recovering from a four years' drunk; Mr. Hayes undertook to steady us, during the aftereffects of our war-spree. Why should we neglect to pay in full the price of our four years' unrighteousness? As a nation we had so often ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... isn't a dear one. It's the smallest I could find in the place, and I don't think they're likely to charge for attendance; if they do, it'll be a swindle, for I ordered eggs and bacon an hour ago, and they've not come yet. I wonder what they'll charge for the eggs and bacon. Suppose there are two eggs, that'll be 2 pence; and a slice of bacon, 2 pence; bread, 1 ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later attacks did not diminish in violence: "the swindle or rather theft—impudent and barefaced as it is": "when Samuel was caught with his hand in the till (or Isaacs if you prefer to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... a waste of holy water When we're taken to the font: They that make us pay for burial Swindle us ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... seemed to be dying out; even private morality flickered ominously; every free State became subject to a despot, always unscrupulous and often infamous; warfare became a mere pretext for the rapine and extortions of mercenaries; diplomacy grew to be a mere swindle; the humanists inoculated literature with the filthiest refuse cast up by antiquity; nay, even civic and family ties were loosened; assassinations and fratricides began to abound, and all law, human and divine, to be set ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... to be licked? There must be some swindle about the land," said the Governor. Then in the local vernacular: "What are ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... dog," furiously cried the official to the trembling coach-builder, "don't you know that this gentleman wishes to go to Yakutsk, and you are trying to swindle him into buying a 'Bolshaya' coupe!" And in less than a minute I was being whirled away towards the Police Station, where a number of the peculiar sleighs required for this journey are kept on hand ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... she, in her highest key, "do you mean that you have come into this here house to swindle me? Do you dare for to come with your airs here, and call yourself a nobleman's lady, and sleep in the best bed, when you're no better nor a common tramper? I'll thank you, ma'am, to get out, ma'am. I'll have no sick paupers in this house, ma'am. You know ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray

... which they are the proprietors. They are the legitimate possessors; you are the intruder. You live in concubinage with luck. What do you want that you have not already? Shibboleth help me! This fellow is a rascal. To multiply himself by Dea would be pleasant, all the same. Such happiness is like a swindle. Those above who possess happiness by privilege do not like folks below them to have so much enjoyment. If they ask you what right you have to be happy, you will not know what to answer. You have no patent, and they have. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... various capitalists in the "Yazoo Claims" was $1,500,000. [Footnote: Senate Documents, Eighteenth Congress, Second Session, 1824-25, Vol. ii, Doc. No. 14, and Senate Documents, Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836-37, Vol. ii, No. 212. After the grants were secured, the companies attempted to swindle the State of Georgia by making payments in depreciated currency. Georgia refused to accept it. When the grant was rescinded, both houses of the Georgia Legislature marched in solemn state to the Capitol front and burned the deed.] The ground upon which this appropriation ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... Swindle. —Mistress: "Did you ask for milk bread?" Domestic: "Yes, mum." "What a miserable little loaf they gave you!" "Yes, mum. It's my opinion, mum, that that baker ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various

... saw the same kind of people and the same dance. True, there was a baby eating some candy in the back of the hut, but its jaws did all the dancing for it. This was a swindle which the boys would not further encourage by their presence, ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')

... Lebyadkin had left off drinking he was far from being in a harmonious state of mind. Drunkards of many years' standing, like Lebyadkin, often show traces of incoherence, of mental cloudiness, of something, as it were, damaged, and crazy, though they may deceive, cheat, and swindle, almost as well as anybody ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the money into the Company, I tell you, against your advice. The Company is more or less a swindle." ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... wine—got broke—open the saloon. Toughs come there, thieves, to swindle the immigrants. Awfully slick. No good to warn immigrants—they lose all their money. Come in crying. What can I do? I get after the bums and they say, 'Giotto no good; we will kill him.' Then I ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... all spoke very highly of him. I thought, there could be no great risk in doing it, for my confidence in Frank was very great. I thought, of course, this would insure my claim of eighteen thousand dollars, but it eventually proved to be a deep-laid plot to swindle me. Frank had no notes or accounts that were of any value; they were all bogus and got up to deceive his poor old father and others. He had no property shipped to South America. It was all found out, when too late, that he had ruined himself by gambling and bad company, often losing a ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome

... longer," he declared. "Well, and how are you? And how is the swindle?" It was Micky's pet joke to call June's invention the "swindle," though in his heart he was almost as proud of ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres

... of the smooth brown cloth and neat white linen of a well-to-do city gentleman of the last century. Yet that solemn, massive, prosperous-looking building is the enduring monument of one of the most gigantic shams on record—a sham and swindle that was the prolific parent of a whole brood of shams and swindles; for that building, with honesty and credit and mercantile honor written in its every line and angle, is all that remains of the South Sea House. It is a melancholy place—the Hall of the Kings at ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... himself a person of no consequence at the Cape, had already announced his intention to emigrate to Australia with his family; and he appeared to be waiting only to wreak his vengeance upon Levi Fairfield, who had defeated his plan to swindle Mr. Watson out of twenty thousand dollars. The young man had exposed and ruined him, in his estimation—not the crime; and he could not leave the country till he had "paid him off," though he was not so particular ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... my answer, take it, and carry it down to that old bricklayer in Carrick, whose daughter has the divil's bargain in you; and for the like of that you're not bad matched. Tell him from me, Larry Macdermot—tell him from me, that I'm not so owld yet, nor so poor, nor so silly, that he can swindle me out of my lands and house that way. So clever as you think yourself, Mr. Keegan, you may walk back to Carrick again, and don't think to call yourself masther ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... "the thing itself," the whole of it. And thus the ultimate point of Brahma, and the infinite depth of all transcendental philosophy, may reappear in a cheap, portable, and convenient form, as a declaration that the real meaning of some mysterious transaction was that it amounted to a sixpenny swindle at thimble-rig; for to such base uses have the Shaster and the Vedas ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... ill at ease there; it was no comfort to her to gaze upon the pallid, wasted face of the man she loved when she realized that, by her presence here, she was constituting herself a party to a heart-breaking swindle, and must deny herself the joy of gazing upon that same beloved countenance when, later, it should be glowing with health and youth and high hopes. He was too weak to speak more than a few words to her. The faintest imaginable pressure of his hand answered the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... forth that her Majesty had been moved to this step by the firm trust she had in the skill and fidelity of the said Mr. M'Buffer; but if so her Majesty's trust would seem to have been somewhat misplaced, as Mr. M'Buffer, having been a managing director of a bankrupt swindle, from which he had contrived to pillage some thirty or forty thousand pounds, was now unable to show his face at Tillietudlem, or in the House of Commons; and in thus retreating from his membership ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... puts her out is 't the ring 's you slide up to close the whisks for killin' flies won't stay up, 'n the flies don't get killed but jus' get hit so they buzz without stoppin' from then on. Mrs. Jilkins says right out 's she considers the whole thing a swindle, 'n' 'f Mr. Kimball was n't rentin' his store o' her brother she sh'd tell him so to his face. She says the three-inch measure on the handle 's too short to be o' any real service on a farm, 'n' her ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner

... to some of my unpopular and unsalable pictures, and went so far, in the way of friendship, that he actually hung them in his dining-room! He was very fond of recalling reminiscences of our childhood, especially what he characterized as "the great Fulledge railway swindle." When we were little boys we undertook the construction of a miniature railway on his father's land, and issued shares to pay for the rolling plant and the rails. We got together rather a handsome sum in this way from various good-natured friends, and after the expiration of some ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... The swindle was now discovered, and the culprit, after the first shock to his feelings had abated, showed me, with evident if subdued satisfaction, how the ingenious ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... from that tribewn, Thou shameless and Unjust; Thou Swindle, picking pockets in The name of Truth august: Come down, thou hoary blasphemy, For die thou shalt ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... "Swindle is an ugly word, Mr. Skinner. Please do not use it again to describe my legitimate business—and don't ask any sympathy of me. You two are old enough and experienced enough in the shipping game to spin your own tops. You didn't ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne

... the extent and the nature of the loss, and the steps which he had decided upon taking, went on to explain the circumstances as best he could. He had made some inquiry, and felt no doubt that a gigantic swindle had been perpetrated by Major Tifto and others. The swindle had been successful. Mr. Moreton had consulted certain gentlemen of high character versed in affairs of the turf. He mentioned Mr. Lupton among others,—and had been assured ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... all over the world, make twenty thousand francs per annum by charges for postage alone; accounts of expenses of protest pay for Mme. la Baronne de Nucingen's dresses, opera box, and carriage. The charge for postage is a more shocking swindle, because a house will settle ten matters of business in as many lines of a single letter. And of the tithe wrung from misfortune, the Government, strange to say! takes its share, and the national revenue is swelled by a tax on commercial failure. And the Bank? from the august ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... vain that she complained, and told of this abominable swindle; Derues had been beforehand with her, and the slander he had disseminated bore its fruits. It was said that his old mistress was endeavouring by an odious falsehood to destroy the reputation of a man who had ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... let any one swindle you again," said Bob, a trifle excitedly. "You don't have to worry about interest and taxes, any more, Aunts. You have a fortune right here in your own dooryard; or if not exactly out by the pump, then ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson

... an all wise and provident God that, my father has more of that sable kind of busy fellows, greasy, slick, and fat; and they are not cheated to death out of their hard earnings by villainous and infernal abolitionists, whose philanthropy is interest, and whose only desire is to swindle the slave-holder out of his own property, and convert its labor to their own ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland

... other pushed it back. "What's the use of reading?" he said. "When I heard of the arrest of that poor Jottras, I guessed at once what was in store for me. It is about the Mutual Credit swindle, ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... must remember that the professional politicians all stand in together when a financial swindle is being carried out. There is no "opposition" in these things. Since it is the very business of the Free Press to expose the falsehood or inanity of the Official Capitalist Press, one may truly say that a great part of the energies ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... been too long and severe. The worst is over now, and we are going to pull through better than I expected. Don't take the matter so bitterly to heart. I admit myself that the operation promised well at first. You were misled, and so were we all, by downright deception. That the swindle was imposed on us through you was more your misfortune than your fault, and it will make you a keener business man in the future. You have worked like a galley-slave all summer to retrieve matters, and have taken no vacation at all. You must take one ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... had paid a pound a week for more than three years, totalling a hundred and seventy pounds at the least, and instantly the glorious simplicity of the scheme dawned upon me, and I became so interested in the swindle that I lit the gas, fearing my little lamp would be exhausted before my investigation ended, for it promised to be ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... Ford leaned forward and began the story he had rehearsed. It was a new version of an old swindle and to every self-respecting confidence man was well known as the "sick engineer" game. The plot is very simple. The sick engineer is supposed to be a mining engineer who, as an expert, has examined a gold mine and ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... matter," he proceeded. "I've just ruined myself by marrying you; that's what I've done. Not a soul in the place will come to the house because of you. Nobody could ever stand you but me; and what have I got by it? Not a halfpenny! It was just a swindle, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... cheat and a swindle," exclaimed Mr. Brooks, indignantly. "We'd better have spent the money for a horsewhip, and whipped them ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)

... the legislature, said, that "any attempt at reformation of the present system is an absurdity, a swindle and a fraud. It is a damnable outrage. The lessee contract would not stand fifteen minutes before a petit jury. I could hang any of the lessees before a petit jury in two and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... Rose Euclid! He blamed her for not having accomplished the miracle of eternal youth. He actually considered that she had cheated him. "Is this all? What a swindle!" he thought, as he was piecing together the shivered fragments of his ideas into a new pattern. He had felt much the same as a boy, at Bursley Annual Wakes once, on entering a booth which promised horrors and did not supply them. He had ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... hands, asking him to glance over them, and to see whether there was any truth in the statement that they were heirs to an immense fortune in America. The old count, in his capacity of burgomaster, declared that the affair looked to him very questionable, that he believed it was a mere swindle, and that there was surely nothing in it for them. Whether he returned to them the papers or not, is unknown, but he declared to the day of his death that he had restored them, whereas the Brandts of Aschersleben swear that he did not. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... of him now but for the half-crown the lady had given him! She was not quite a lady, or she would have walked out of the shop, and declined to gain by frustrating a swindle; but she was a good-hearted woman, and God's messenger to Clare. He bought a bigger loaf than usual, at which, and the time of the day when he bought it, and the half-crown presented in payment, Mr. Ball wondered; but ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... within fifteen minutes he is as white as a sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore pilots wisely train these cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... had formerly been coachman to Comte de Vandeuvres. As the result of a racing swindle by Vandeuvres, Marechal lost a large sum over a filly named Nana, and, his suspicions having been aroused, he caused such a scandal that the Comte was disqualified ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... L. I know as it's a kitch o' some sort ... —hows'ever, jest this once. (He purchases another packet, and is rewarded by an eyeglass, constructed of cardboard and coloured gelatine, which he flings into the circle in a fury.) 'Tis nobbut a darned swindle—and I've done wi' ye! Ye're all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various

... days of toil, so many long and difficult journeys, one blanket and three kegs of rum, only remained, besides the poor and almost worn out clothing on our bodies." The sending of missionaries, to labor by the side of the miscreants who thus swindle and debauch the ignorant savage, is a mockery of the office, and a waste of the time of these valuable men. If the Indians traded within our states, with our regular traders, the same laws and the same public sentiment which protects us, ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... a little sometimes. Just listen to those colonels. Didn't you hear them say 'damn' and 'Hell's fire' and 'Devil'? O, according to our theology there's no hope for 'em. A man may defraud a widow or swindle an orphan and make a landing; but when he talks about the Devil and Hell ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... ground amount to. There's some sort of a bungalow there, built by the shooting-club. Here's a description of the place, on the strength of which I bought it. You may take these papers along to judge the size of the swindle." ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... directions, and a great consequent effusion of dollars, until, all parties being sick of the expense, the mine was deserted, and the town decamped. According to the second version, told me with much secrecy of manner, the whole affair, mine, mill, and town, were parts of one majestic swindle. There had never come any silver out of any portion of the mine; there was no silver to come. At midnight trains of packhorses might have been observed winding by devious tracks about the shoulder of the mountain. They came from far away, from Amador or Placer, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... but Doak's gaze didn't relent. He was only three years behind in his taxes now and this extra moola on the swindle-sheet could bring him two months closer. Anyone who was only two years behind on his taxes was considered a ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault

... being Dan Baxter, a fellow who had been the bully of the school, but who was now a homeless wanderer on the face of the earth. Baxter came from a disreputable family, his father having at one time tried to swindle Mr. Rover out of a rich gold mine in the West. The elder Baxter was now in prison suffering ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield

... mob was pouring out of a side street, where they had just smashed the windows of the offices of a socialist newspaper, which had supplemented the Argentine dispatch with spiteful comments under the headlines: "Another Patriotic Swindle." ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... pyramid of fine-looking picture-elephants is an ugly live elephant or two standing on a beer-keg or two, which is a wonderful feat for elephants, of course, but not an entertaining one to human sight-seers; and as a final swindle, the cannon act is a man on a spring disguised as a wooden cannon, who is thus hoisted a few feet into the air, where he catches hold of his swinging bar and completes the usual act of an "aerial acrobat." "Fi on't!" as ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... therefore go without further question. A tax has been paid on all the alcohol in these things. In many cases, also, a further tax has been paid for the government stamp on patent medicines. That the medicine may be dangerous, that it may be a cruel swindle, that it may take from consumptives and others money which is sorely needed for air and food, and give them in return what is worse than nothing—all these things are nothing to the State if the ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby

... like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the 18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at all like the conduct of a ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... fellow, he was in no mental or physical condition to push his claims in the West. He should have remained at home and allowed some hustling Western lawyer to act for him. If he falls into the clutches of some of our land agents they'll swindle him out of every cent of his fortune. I must give him and the boy the tip when I get the chance." The great scout laughed softly. "When I get the chance is good. I reckon I had best pull myself ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill

... everything to their captain, who takes his share of all they get, except of what they earn by fortune-telling. They are very clever at making a good bargain; when they know of a rich merchant being in the place, they disguise themselves, enter into communications with him, and swindle him, ... after which they change their clothes, have their horses shod the reverse way, and the shoes covered with some soft material lest they should be heard, and ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix



Words linked to "Swindle" :   fraud, rip off, sting, swiz, hustle, holdout, cozenage, pyramiding, thimblerig, confidence game, bunco game, con game, bunko game, chisel, flimflam, short, bunko, shell game, confidence trick



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