"Blackmail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had the Prime Minister known so flagrant an instance of blackmail unpunishable by law as that which the Princess Charlotte sprung on him when, in brief interview, she dictated the terms on which alone the Ann Juggins episode was to be allowed to sink into oblivion. And perhaps one can hardly wonder, under the circumstances, ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... owing to the cunning with which their peccadilloes are practised, partly to their well-known habit of sticking by one another, and still more to the mild but very definite terrorism which they exercise. Country residents, when a Gipsy encampment comes near them, know that a certain amount of blackmail in this way or that has to be paid, and that in their own time the strangers, if not interfered with, will go. Interference with them is apt to bring down a visit from that very unpleasant fowl, the 'red ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... "Well, I heard him blackmail Larkin for five hundred dollars back by the corral fence. An' Larkin knew what he had to do as soon as Caldwell showed up. Didn't yuh see him turn yaller at ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... coolly, "I can ring for the gendarmes to take you back to the cells, and you will stand your trial for blackmail, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... beat Tammany Hall permanently in one way—by making the government of a city as human, as kindly, as jolly as Tammany Hall. I am aware of the contract-grafts, the franchise-steals, the dirty streets, the bribing and the blackmail, the vice-and-crime partnerships, the Big Business alliances of Tammany Hall. And yet it seems to me that Tammany has a better perception of human need, and comes nearer to being what a government should be, than any scheme yet proposed by a group of "uptown good government" enthusiasts. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... machine drawing, and I took up these subjects with considerable avidity. Exercise I got chiefly in the form of walks. There was some cricket in the summer and football in the winter sustained by young men's clubs that levied a parasitic blackmail of the big people and the sitting member, but I was never very keen at these games. I didn't find any very close companions among the youths of Wimblehurst. They struck me, after my cockney schoolmates, as loutish and slow, servile and furtive, spiteful and mean. WE ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... most insolent tone while at the same time he pointed his hand at Joe's birthmark. "When you bent forward to pick up your cap I remembered you the moment I put my eyes on that streak of white hair," and then, sure that he had before him a victim whom he could blackmail with perfect impunity, he inquired, "Have you been back to Rugby since I saw you the last time, and say, McDonald, how are the chances for your helping a poor friend to the price of a meal and a ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... her again to "Come and say good night to me!" terrified as I saw the light from my father's candle already creeping up the wall, but also making use of his approach as a means of blackmail, in the hope that my mother, not wishing him to find me there, as find me he must if she continued to hold out, would give in to me, and say: "Go back to your room. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... which advertize them, the restaurants which cater for them, and, in short, all the trades to which they are good customers, not to mention the public officials and representatives whom they silence by complicity, corruption, or blackmail. Add to these the employers who profit by cheap female labor, and the shareholders whose dividends depend on it [you find such people everywhere, even on the judicial bench and in the highest places in Church and State], and you get a large and powerful ...
— How He Lied to Her Husband • George Bernard Shaw
... sincerely, the epic march of the American pioneer I had tried to express it in an address which was in fact a sloppy poem. I should not like to have that manuscript printed precisely as it came from my pen, and a phonographic record of my voice would serve admirably as an instrument of blackmail. However, I thought at the time that I had done moderately well, and my mother's shy smile ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... sincerity, as well as an innumerable mass of satires, pamphlets, statements, diatribes which caused all the princes of his day to tremble, and through making them tremble also brought gold into the coffers of Aretino; he had raised blackmail to the ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... but once, had occasion to use a record that related to a private conversation or agreement. Then it concerned a matter involving a large sum, a demand having been made upon him that smacked of blackmail. He arranged a meeting, which his opponent regarded as an indication that he was willing to yield. There were present the contestant, his lawyer, ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... it," declared Judith. "As your counsel I forbid it. Just give that girl a chance and she will bind you over, body and soul; refined blackmail, you know. Don't you dare answer that note until I dictate the reply," Judith swung her arm around Jane's waist in the most all-embracing manner. "Please, Dinksy," she almost whispered, "wait until we ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... what it means. You want money—blackmail, and you think you've got a good chance. But I will not give you a cent. I will tell Dr. Sommers first, and let him ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... cunning enough to steer clear of such a danger in the most dexterous manner. She had a firm idea that Berwin had, in her own emphatic phrase, "done something" for which he was wanted by the police, and was always on the look out to learn the secret of his isolated life, in order to betray him, or blackmail him, or get him in some way under her thumb. As yet she ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... the witness's impression was that an attack was dangerous, a threat serious, a blackmail conceivable, a brawl intentional, a gesture insulting, an assault premeditated. In these, and thousands of other cases, we must know the point of view, and are compelled to draw our deductions from it. And finally, who of us believes himself to be altogether immune to emotional induction? ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... there by "members" whose standing and presumed respectability were beyond reproach—and they were bled white; while, to add variety to the crooked games, orgies, revels and carousals of the most depraved character likewise furnished the lever for blackmail—the "member" ostensibly being in as bad a hole, and in as desperate a predicament as ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... horrid person," I flung at him. "You're trying to frighten me—to blackmail me—into selling you my lace for thirty shillings, when maybe it's worth twenty times that. But if any one calls the police, it will be me, to give you in charge ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... they shared their spoils with the supposed officers of the law. And there were more degenerate miscreants still, who connived with the Police and went unscathed. As if the vast sums collected from these willing bribers were not enough, the Police added a system of blackmail to be levied on those who were not deliberately vicious, but who sought convenience. If you walked downtown you found the sidewalk in front of certain stores almost barricaded by packing-boxes, whereas next door the way might be clear. This simply ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... had, 'where none but he and Satan could find it, and the longest liver should take all'; how, out of some such tradition, Edgar Poe built up the wonderful tale of the Gold Bug; how the planters of certain Southern States, and even the Governor of North Carolina, paid him blackmail, and received blackmail from him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and fought ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the old man remained-motionless, staring up. The word "blackmail" resumed its buzzing in Mr. Ventnor's ears. The impudence the consummate impudence of it from this fraudulent old ruffian with one foot in bankruptcy and one foot in the grave, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his gang, punishing by judicial murder the smallest insubordination, the faintest suspicion of rivalry. Even when he had shut his victim up in Newgate, he did not leave him so long as there was a chance of blackmail. He would make the most generous offers of evidence and defence to every thief that had a stiver left him. But whether or not he kept his bargain—that depended upon policy and inclination. On one occasion, when he had brought a friend to the Old Bailey, and relented ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... whose driver was already planning the ways to spend the money which he was to make by a little scientific blackmail. ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... had the sense to turn him down hard; and I believe he stole that necklace of Van Ruyne's from her during the short time she had it—either just to get her into trouble and be revenged on her, or to get her into his power. Whichever it was—to blackmail her—for he'd cadged on her for money before her father died—or to scare her into going to him for help—I'd like to hunt the worthless hound down for it. And I'd never ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... tears, no maledictions—just good, hard sense, Bingle, that's what it was. Not many of them would have been so decent about it. They usually make a bluff or something of the sort—money, you know, regular blackmail. But she didn't. She got out as quietly as a mouse, left no trace behind, no regrets, no complaints. Just a note saying she understood and wishing me luck. ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... was a spontaneous invention of his own, concocted in emergency, as he asserted in his confession at London, or whether it was a carefully constructed lie taught him by his father in order to revenge himself upon some hated neighbors, and perhaps to exact blackmail, as some of the accused later charged, we shall never know. In later life the boy is said to have admitted that he had been set on by his father,[8] but the narrative possesses certain earmarks of a story struck out by a child's imagination.[9] It is easy enough ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... "Blackmail? What are you talking about?" Mrs. Croft went pale, and retired swiftly but noiselessly into the lavatory, closing the door behind her. "What did Max tell you over the ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... spluttered. "You're a liar; she's a liar; you're all a pack of liars, trying to blackmail a decent man. He had no money, I say! He had no money, and if ever he said so, he's ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... have you ever, in all these years, ran across anything—any item of expenditure, any correspondence, anything whatever—which would lead you to think that Mr. Holladay was a victim of blackmail, or that he had ever had a ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... must cut down on his charities. He could not reduce the sum for the General Hospital Fund; he had been giving to that a number of years.—Nor that for the asylum; Mrs. Wright was the president of that board, and had told him she counted on him.—Hang Mrs. Wright! It was positive blackmail!—Nor the pew-rent; that was respectable—nor the Associated Charities; every one gave to that. He must cut out ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... was not actively offensive, as were most of the others. She was a dainty little blonde, with a baby face, in which were set two light-blue eyes, of a sort to widen often in demure wonder over most things in a surprising and naughty world. She had been convicted of blackmail, and she made no pretense even of innocence. Instead, she was inclined to boast over her ability to bamboozle men at her will. She was a natural actress of the ingenue role, and in that pose she could unfailingly beguile the heart of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Blackmail, I hear you exclaim! And, so, if you wish, you may construe my behavior, since I reply—"Science first, science last!" To have been deprived of the means to pursue my experiments at this time would have been, I believed, to impoverish the world. For not even science could reveal to me that my life's ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... into that. Chris, himself, had no connection with it. Once he threatened me ... but I've since learned what he meant.... Just a little blackmail which concerned a woman. ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... me names, in fact. I can stand it, and I guess I deserve some of 'em. I am something of a rascal, and a consummate liar, I admit; but when you talk about a lot of scandal up your sleeve, more 'n bank notes can pay by blackmail, and your chance of fixin' Phil Baronet's character, Lettie, you just can't do it. You are too mad to be anything but foolish to-day, but I'm glad you did come to me; it may save more 'n Phil's name. Your own is in the worst jeopardy ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... another gallant and gracious individual, that his honour stood rooted in dishonour. He was, indeed, somewhat in the position of such an aristocrat of romance, whose splendour has the dark spot of a secret and a sort of blackmail.... His glory did not come from the Crusades, but from the Great Pillage.... The oligarchs were descended from usurers and thieves. That, for good or evil, was the paradox of England; the typical ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... could not be termed extortion or blackmail within the meaning of the law, though to any one conversant with Mr. Mainwaring's private correspondence it may have had that appearance. I was, however, merely making an effort to collect what was legally due me. Mr. Mainwaring, before leaving ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... speculating as to what the man's object could have been. Alfred said vulgar curiosity; but Beth suspected that there was more than that in the manoeuvre; and when Dicksie suggested acutely that Gard had intended to blackmail them, she and Alfred both exclaimed that ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her new associates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke—the little ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... of silence, in some respects akin to a huge compounded system of blackmail, it is generally known that department stores are often breeding stations of prostitution by reason of two factors—extremely low wages and environment. There can be no disputing the fact that these two working together, and perhaps superinduced by other ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... as a parting shot, "that girls don't get into clubs here by blackmail. Even if Judy had put you up, you wouldn't have had the ghost ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... man he thought was now a happy bridegroom. Owing to an indiscreet word dropped by our simple-minded hero, a gang of smugglers, who ran an illicit still on the moors, had gathered something about Andy stealing the letters from the post-office and Squire Egan burning them. They had already begun to blackmail the squire, and in order to defeat them it was necessary to get Andy out of the country for some time. So nothing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... "It isn't blackmail to tell a man that a bomb he's going to throw will blow up in his hand." Chalmers glanced quickly at his watch. "Now, Doctor Whitburn, if you have nothing further to discuss, I have a class in a few ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... possibility in the nature of blackmail comes from unprofessional practitioners like those mentioned in the preceding paragraph, who, in some way having the address of the defendant, communicate with him or her in the hope of stirring up trouble and representing ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... we knew that he was the same Ab Handy who once did business with a marked deck; who cheated widows and orphans; who sold bogus bonds; who got on two sides of lawsuits, and whose note was never good at any bank unless backed by blackmail. ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... grown in the neighbourhood of the Highlands, on account of its being liable to be reaped and carried off by the caterans, and that before it was ripe. The only method by which security of a certain sort could be obtained was by the payment of blackmail to some of the principal chiefs, though this was not sufficient to protect them against the lesser marauders. Regular contracts were drawn up between proprietors in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton, and the Macgregors, in ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... possible the wild lands; not so much for the purpose of benefiting the emigrant as it was to enhance the king's exchequer. The royal governors apparently held out great inducements to the settlers, but the sequel always showed that a species of blackmail or tribute must be paid by the purchasers before the lands were granted. The governor was one thing to the higher authorities, but far different to those from whom he could reap advantage. The seeming disinterested motives ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... the estate. They naturally inquired her name and address, and she modestly, but firmly, told them she was the widow of the deceased by virtue of a clandestine marriage which had occurred in Philadelphia. The heirs mistook her modesty for an attempt at blackmail, and acted as defendants in the suit which she instituted. The trial is one of the celebrated cases of the District of Columbia. It lasted upward of a month. Eminent counsel were in it, and many witnesses came to prove the truth of opposite facts. ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... "I believe he came to blackmail you. To see what he could get out of you if he offered to stop the marriage. Well, why not? If these fellows believe all the money ought to be taken away from the capitalists, why should they care how it's done? I can't see much difference between robbing a man, and legislating his ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... agent of Prussia is a commercial agent, and works by those modern methods of bribing and sacking, of boycott and blackmail, which are not only meaner, but often more cruel, than militarism. For any one who realizes the power of such international combinations, there is the more credit due to the artists and men of letters who, like Raemaekers himself, have decisively chosen their ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exercise ceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through which he passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which he traversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging him to pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory.** There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on one side, the Tigris, the Ulai, and the Uknu on the other, ran ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... participation in the war, nor could Japan fail to regard with uneasiness a liberation of the economic activities of 400,000,000 people."[70] Accordingly the proposal lapsed. It must be understood that throughout the war the Japanese were in a position to blackmail the Allies, because their sympathies were with Germany, they believed Germany would win, and they filled their newspapers with scurrilous attacks on the British, accusing them of ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... that they have the monopoly of the trade from Kabul eastward to the borders of Kashmir territory. If you say that you are a Meahgan or Kaka Khel, words signifying one and the same thing, you have not only access where others are questioned, and a sort of blackmail levied on them, but you are treated hospitably, and your daily wants supplied free of cost—as was often the case with us. Of course the Meaghans have to make some return. It is done in this wise: a fair lasting ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... of his prosperity in New York, it had been necessary for him to come to an agreement with Sondheim and Kastner. And the more his prosperity increased the less he dared to resent their petty tyranny and blackmail, because, whether or not they might suffer under his public accusations, it was very certain that internment, if not imprisonment for a term of years, would be the fate reserved for himself. And that, of course, ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... apologists for the evil itself, and then they proceed to extend its aims by bold inferences, and to dragoon the courts into ratifying those inferences, and to employ it as a means of persecution, terrorism and blackmail. The history of the Mann Act offers a shining example of this purpose. It was carried through Congress, over the veto of President Taft, who discerned its extravagance, on the plea that it was needed ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... photographic work of Mr. Collins was strictly commercial—and peculiar. There were fingerprints to be photographed and identified for purpose of private revenge, photographs of people to be merged and repictured in compromising closeness for reasons of blackmail. And even X-Ray photography was included in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... my own. It was now three or four days since the papers had reported the strange kidnapping of Gennaro's five-year-old daughter Adelina, his only child, and the sending of a demand for ten thousand dollars ransom, signed, as usual, with the mystic Black Hand—a name to conjure with in blackmail and extortion. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... been stolen by this man Brower I asked you about—an ex-jockey of Hooper's. Brower held them for blackmail. Unless Hooper came through Brower would record ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... he looked safe. His face sagged more than ever, as though the Postlethwaite nose had withdrawn its support from that pale flesh of funk. If it had any clear meaning at all it expressed a terrified expectation of blackmail. His very ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... appeared at the house about ten o'clock that morning desiring to see the girl. They had talked together on the veranda, where the visitor stated he had effected a settlement and obtained an acknowledgment from Martinez, who was trying to blackmail him and others; that a certain paper had been prepared by the lawyer for use in the disreputable business; that the man had said he had asked Janet to secure it from an old chair in his office; and he wished to learn if she ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... of the young! We move with rapid strides in our time. That which was a threat, scoffed at by many, has become a present and dreadful peril in half a dozen brief years. We took a short cut to make it that when we tried to drain the pool of police blackmail of which the Lexow disclosures had shown us the hideous depths. We drained it into the tenements, and for the police infamy got a real-estate blackmail that is worse. The chairman of the Committee of Fifteen tells us that of more than a hundred tenements, full of ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... particularly kindly frame of mind towards Mr. Rhodes, and I knew and thoroughly disliked his ways with the Press. Further, I did not want to run any risk of Mr. Rhodes hinting later that I had tried to blackmail him, or that he had made a suggestion as to interesting me later in the Chartered Company which had been apparently welcomed by me, and so on and so on. I therefore expressed my opinion that there was no need whatever for a personal interview. ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... what dark secret Dr. Hatterer had, that Her Majesty had discovered in his mind and used to blackmail him with. At last he decided that it was probably none of his business, and didn't ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... is a combination of gratitude and blackmail. The merit system is an attempt to secure efficiency without recognizing friendship or fear. We can safely allow the participation of merit system employees in an agitation so long as they do not go to the point where official advantage may be had through the agitation by securing a reward ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... countrymen." It was the closing prayer of a gospel service among the Chinese in Oakland. The brother who offered it was a Chinese merchant of that city. Two days afterwards he was shot in his own store by a Chinaman because he refused to submit to blackmail. A policeman hastened to the spot and saw him die, and testified in court that his last words were those of prayer to our true God; this testimony, though given probably by an ungodly man, being such as to draw tears from many who listened. Yet some say there are no real Christian Chinamen; ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... fall a prey to the highwaymen which infest many of the provinces, but that most offices anticipate these casualties by compounding for a certain annual sum which is paid regularly to the leader of the gang. For this blackmail the robbers of the district not only agree to abstain from pilfering themselves, but also to keep all others from doing so too. The arrangement suits the local officials admirably, as they escape those pains and penalties which would be exacted if it came to be known that their rule was ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... dattos have always lived by plunder, and they always intend to do so. For one thing, these raiding dattos don't like to have white men on Mindanao. The spread of civilization here means that the old-time dattos will be driven into the wilds, and that there won't be any more plunder or blackmail money to live on. These Moros out yonder wouldn't have bothered me, this time, if I had paid ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... of this interview except the general impression in the family that Mrs. Catron had successfully resisted a vague attempt at blackmail from one of her husband's former dissolute companions. Yet it is only fair to say that Mrs. Catron snapped up, quite savagely, two male sympathizers on this subject, and cried a good deal for two days afterward, and once, in the hearing of her sister-in-law, to ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... his greatness. Evil greatness it is—but neither does that matter. Briefly, this is his history. He was originally a witch-finder—about as low an occupation as exists amongst aboriginal savages. Then he got up in the world and became an Obi-man, which gives an opportunity to wealth via blackmail. Finally, he reached the highest honour in hellish service. He became a user of Voodoo, which seems to be a service of the utmost baseness and cruelty. I was told some of his deeds of cruelty, which are simply sickening. They made me long for an opportunity of helping to drive him back to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... interrupted Burchill. "No blackmail at all—in my view. I happen to possess information of a certain ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... has a policy," said the Viceroy. "A Policy is the blackmail levied on the Fool by the Unforeseen. I am not the former, and I do ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... it is to hear that name again. Seven years since then. Here I am called Margaret Henson, and nobody knows. And now you have found out. Do you come here to blackmail and rob me ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... alter them. In short, property held by a corporation is held at the will of the legislature, and in a way and to an extent that property held by an individual is not. It is not very easy for the legislature to plunder or blackmail individuals, even when they are disfranchised, because it has to be done by general laws, and direct methods arouse direct opposition. But, as we have seen, stockholders as a class cannot defend their rights, and as things are now, their trustees cannot have much ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... Tausend-Kunstlerin (witch of a thousand tricks) is in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... taking him out to my place was to slip him twenty dollars or so, and head him adrift westward, and so out of things. But after we got home and I put the proposition up to him, the beggar began to assert himself and get bold and saucy—tried to blackmail me for an unheard of amount—threatening he'd go and tell you everything if I didn't come across, and all that. Finally I lost my temper with him and gave him a good slap across the face. He happened to be outside the house bucking ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... their value. The brown aboriginal, his "burro" laden with charcoal, or skins of pulque, or himself staggering under a load of planks heavy enough to weigh down a donkey, which he has transported from a mountain forest—ten or twenty miles it may be—is mulcted in this blackmail before he can pass through ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... some decent morganatic affair I wouldn't say; but he must have been a fool to throw away thousands on a woman like that. At the end it was sheer blackmail; but it's something that the old ass didn't get it out of the taxpayers. He could only get it out of the Yank, and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... A'mighty! Why the h—l didn't you ask, man!" And to tell the truth, I am not designed by nature for the cut-throat business of interviewing. To stand before a stranger, note-book in hand, and pry into his personal record, always seems to me only a form of infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success as an interviewer, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... unprofitableness of deceit; but, taxed with being a married man, "As I have a soul to be saved," swore he, "I am not, nor ever was!" The lady had wilfully misrepresented their equivocal relations, and the proceedings in the Scottish Courts meant, vulgarly, blackmail. Both families knew the true facts, and Lord Mark's interference was the result of an old quarrel between them, long since by him buried in oblivion, but on account of which his lordship, as appeared, still bore ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... tactics as she encountered different adversaries and tried no blackmail on stubborn Miles Benton, whom she took pains to see the next time he came back to Greenford for a visit. Him she hailed as the Native-Born. "How would you like to have brazen models and nasty statues made in the building where your own folks have ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... instituted during his exile against medical men, midwives, and others, proceedings which seemed to point to the existence in this country of a state of affairs much akin to that prevailing in France. The affair of the brothers Chrimes, who first sold bogus medicines and then proceeded to blackmail the women who had purchased them, was, in Zola's estimation, particularly significant, for here were hundreds and hundreds of Englishwomen applying to those men for the means of accomplishing the greatest crime against ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... any other object than to steal and to lie. From the top to the bottom of the house all was pillage and waste. Bois l'Hery's horses were unsound, Schwalbach's gallery was a swindle, Moessard's articles a recognised blackmail. De Gery had made a long detailed memorandum of these scandalous abuses, with proofs in support of it. But he specially recommended to Jansoulet's attention the accounts of the Territorial Bank as the real danger of the situation. Attracted by the Nabob's name, as chairman ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... knew no bounds. He railed at me as a trickster. He charged me with wishing to blackmail him. Then seeing that this was not the way to gain his point, ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... "But—but that is blackmail!" he whispered aloud. "A man can't do that sort of thing. What the devil ever put it into my head? ... And there are men I know—women, too—scoundrelly blackguards, who'd use that information somehow; and make ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... had been found. Earth needed a star-drive badly; a few more years, and the need would be desperate. And if a group of power-hungry men could control a star-drive and hold it for profit, they could blackmail an entire planet for centuries, and build an empire in space that could never ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... him that was of the greatest importance, and that when he told father what it was, that he, Langdon, could have anything my father possessed in the way of a job and a competence for life. It sounded like blackmail—I could think of nothing else coming from Tom Langdon—and I told him so. That was unfortunate. There were several persons in my office at the time. He resented the statement and we quarreled. They heard it ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... fertile territory, which at last lay open, and was claimed by no other imperial power, while the weak Kassites ruled Babylon, and the independence of Assyria was in embryo. But the earlier Egyptian armies seem to have gone forth to Syria simply to ravage and levy blackmail. They avoided all fenced places, and returned to the Nile leaving no one to hold the ravaged territory. No Pharaoh before the successor of Queen Hatshepsut made Palestine and Phoenicia his own. It was Thothmes III who first reduced such strongholds as Megiddo, and occupied the ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... without danger, for a large portion of this part of Europe was under no settled government, each petty baron living in his own castle, and holding but slight allegiance to any feudal lord, making war upon his neighbor on his own account, levying blackmail from travelers, and perpetually at variance with ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... considerable interest was tried before Hon. Clifford D. Gregory in the month of March, 1899, in the city of Albany, New York. It was entitled the "People of the State of New York against Margaret E. Cody," as charged with the crime of blackmail, in the sending of a letter to Mr. George J. Gould, in which she threatened to divulge certain information which she claimed to possess about his dead father, Jay Gould. The character of this information was such ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... the door locked, he exclaimed: 'If you do not open this door immediately, I will have you thrown into prison for blackmail and assault!' ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... thing, Featherstone never spoke about his life in the Old Country, and Foster was surprised when he stated his intention of spending a few months there. It looked as if Daly knew his secret and had used his knowledge to blackmail him. ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... got settled in Damascus before he expressed his intention of visiting the historic Tadmor in the desert. It was an eight days' journey, and the position of the two wells on the way was kept a secret by Jane Digby's tribe, who levied blackmail on all visitors to the famous ruins. The charge was the monstrous one of L250; but Burton—at all times a sworn foe to cupidity—resolved to go without paying. Says Mrs. Burton, "Jane Digby was in a very anxious state when she heard this announcement, as she ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... But have it from me first that Rickie and his aunt have both behaved most generously. No, no, Agnes, I'll not be interrupted. Garbled versions must not get about. If the Wonham man is not satisfied now, he must be insatiable. He cannot levy blackmail on us for ever. Sir, I give you two minutes; then you will be ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... for its sins to the purgatory of early bedtime. Split came stealing in from the other room, bringing Frank along that she might not cry and betray her elder sister's movements—a successful sort of blackmail the youngest Madigan often practised. And later, Kate, looking most conventional and full-dressed in this nightgowned society, brought succor for the starving. They munched chocolate and camped comfortably, three on each bed, while Sissy told her ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... money in exchange for protection? True that they practise blackmail and extortion? Of course it's true. Whenever a big temptation appears loose in a city half the people who get a look at it trip and fall. Oh, I'd like to reform this city, Miss Barbara—and this country. I'd like to be dictator ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... modestly accepted by writing in 1838 to a friend:—"I am getting a kind of fame as the literary man of Scotland. Thirty years ago, in the North countries, a fellow achieved an immense reputation as 'The Tollman,' being the solitary individual entitled by law to levy blackmail at a ferry." In 1860 he was made Honorary President of the Associated Societies of the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Thackeray. This was the place held afterward by Lord Lytton, Sir David Brewster, Carlyle, and Gladstone. Aytoun ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... sooner was I free than I fled from Vernon, dined in Paris, bought a false beard, and plunged wildly into the vortex of a dancing-hall. Scoundrel! This is past pardon! My sensibilities revolt, and my prudence shudders. Who shall say but that one night I may be recognised? Who can foretell to what blackmail you may expose me? I, Maitre Lapalme, forbid your profligacies, which devolve upon ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the transaction of the lots as Mrs. Peabody had explained it to her, and Bob understood that the farmer, basing his reasoning on his own probable conduct under similar conditions, suspected him of intended blackmail. ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... private individuals by means of theft and blackmail has not been levied by order of the 'committee,' but by certain unscrupulous Nihilists acting on their own behalf. However, we are all the more ready to admit that such things have been done when we remember that only five such cases are known ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 12, December, 1880 • Various
... you can blackmail me into a partnership?" I turned at bay. "You must have seen that I wanted to keep out ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... feel, nor have I since been able to understand, all the indignation which has been poured on Lord Clive's head for this artifice, by which a treacherous, overreaching scoundrel was robbed of the blackmail he had tried to extort. As to the charge which has been made against that great man of having caused Admiral Watson's name to be forged to the second treaty, I can only say that it was the general opinion at the time that the gallant ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... looked rather sheepish. "I'm afraid we've made a mess of it between us. Case of political blackmail, you see, and the young lady thought she could handle it herself. And so she could have done if we hadn't butted in, begging your pardon ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... sacrificing all its prisoners of war upon its own altars, sent some of them up to Mexico as part of its tribute. The ravening maw of the horrible deities was thus appeased, not by the pueblo that paid the blackmail, but by the power that extorted it, and thus the latter obtained a larger share of divine favour. Generally the unhappy prisoners were forced to carry the corn and other articles. They were convoyed by couriers who saw that everything was properly delivered at the tecpan, and ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... answer! But if you ask my candid opinion I should say nothing more nor less than to make you prisoner and blackmail your father for ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... least necessary for them to prove that they have been fortified in their ignorance by medical advice. It is sometimes said that the existing law could be utilized for bringing actions of this kind, and that no greater facilities should be offered for fear of increasing attempts at blackmail. The inutility of the law at present for this purpose is shown by the fact that it seldom or never happens that any attempt is made to utilize it, while not only are there a number of existing punishable offences which form the subject of attempts at blackmail, but blackmail ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... those very conquerors from the soil of Mexico. Look at Sonora and Chihuahua, half-depopulated! Look at New Mexico; its citizens living by suffrance: living, as it were, to till the land and feed the flocks for the support of their own enemies, who levy their blackmail by the year! But, come; the sun tells us we must ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... their own statement. She ain't his sister any more than I am. Did you ever see two people that looked less like they was related to each other? You bet you didn't. Now I got a hunch that the prisoner follered her to that guy's apartment. What for, I don't know. Maybe for blackmail. He got onto what was goin' on, and makes up his mind to rake in a nice bunch of hush-money. That's been done a couple of times in the apartment buildin' I'm superintendent of. A feller I had workin' for me as a porter cleaned up five or six hundred dollars that ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon
... after year by this means he was accumulating money, until he was reputed to have made a fortune, although never known by the people to have been engaged in any honest industrial occupation in California. For the purpose perhaps of adding the levy of blackmail to his other modes of accumulation, he established a newspaper, called the Sunday Times, and without principle, character or education, assumed to be the enlightener of public opinion and the conservator ...
— A Sketch of the Causes, Operations and Results of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee of 1856 • Stephen Palfrey Webb
... to Cape Comorin the whole coast was beset by native pirates, and, with the rise of the Mahratta power, the evil increased. Petty chiefs sometimes levied blackmail by giving passports to those who would pay for them, claiming the right to plunder all ships that did not carry their passes; but often the formality was dispensed with. Owing to the paucity of records ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... members were all Irish, professed the Roman Catholic faith, and were active in the Ancient Order of Hibernians. The Church, the better class of Irishmen, and the Hibernians, however, were shocked by the doings of the Molly Maguires and utterly disowned them. They began their career of blackmail and bullying by sending threats and death notices embellished with crude drawings of coffins and pistols to those against whom they fancied they had a grievance, usually the mine boss or an unpopular foreman. If ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... up again: "Well, I've stated your case, messieurs. It amounts to simple, clumsy blackmail. I'm to split my earnings with you, or you'll denounce me to the police. That's ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... with a preface (signed Asa G. Eddy) attacking Edward Arens, and contains the famous chapter on "Demonology" in which Mrs. Eddy devotes forty-six pages to settling scores with half a dozen of her early students, charging one and another with theft, adultery, murder, blackmail, etc. The Reverend Mr. Wiggin, when he revised Mrs. Eddy's book in 1885, persuaded her to omit these vituperative passages on the ground that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various |
