"Bedlam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reformation, yet finding in religion no pleasures to supply the place of the juvenile amusements which he had relinquished, he began to apprehend that he lay under some special malediction; and he was tormented by a succession of fantasies which seemed likely to drive him to suicide or to Bedlam. At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood; but his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew. At another time ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... if she had nothing to send by him, mayhap he might stay in town a day or two; for he had never seen the lions in the Tower, nor Bedlam, nor the tombs; and he would make a holiday or two, as he had leave to do, if she had no business or message that required his posting down ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... nights about this burg when the miners and cow- boys have had their pay, are one Bedlam. Decent folks lock their doors and windows and never show a light that might attract any insanely drunken miner. That's why I want you far on your road to camp before these rough foreigners come to town. Jake would revel in a wild night ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... fortification whatever: a large parade-ground, nearly destitute of grass and planted with half-dead trees, is surrounded by the barracks and quarters, neat, low buildings, and beyond, at one end, are the ordnance and sutler's stores. A hospital and a large old barrack called Bedlam tower above the rest: more buildings straggle away toward the Laramie River, where there is a bridge. The position commands the river and bluffs. No grass, no gardens, no irrigation, no vegetables nor anything green is here. One good-sized cottonwood, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... individual can entirely free himself. 'There is', he says, 'scarce a man so free from it, but that if he should always, on all occasions, argue or do as in some cases he constantly does, would not be thought fitter for Bedlam than civil conversation. I do not here mean when he is under the power of an unruly passion, but in the steady, calm course of his life. That which thus captivates their reason, and leads men of sincerity blindfold from common sense will, when examined, be found to be what we are speaking of. Some ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Bethlem or Bedlam Hospital, Founders' Hall, Armourers' Hall, the churches of St. Olave Jewry, St. Margaret, Lothbury, and St. ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... A Bedlam of noise smote Rhoda Gray's ears as she entered the Silver Sphinx. A jazz band was in full swing; on the polished section of the floor in the center, a packed mass of humanity swirled and gyrated and wriggled in the contortions of the "latest" dance, and laughed and howled ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... "Go off the stage, you English fool! Hoo! Three cheers for Ned Forrest!" which were given with a will. Then came another chair, narrowly missing Macready's head, who, now alarmed for his personal safety, fled from the stage, and the curtain fell. But the bedlam that had been let loose did not stop. Hoots, curses, threats of vengeance, and the confused sounds of a mob given wholly over to passion, struck terror into all hearts; and Macready, fearing a rush would be made for him behind the scenes, ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... out, and what with the crackling of the hungry flames, the neighing of the horses that had drawn the fire-engine to the spot, the whooping of gangs of delighted boys, and a lot of other miscellaneous sounds, Bedlam seemed to have broken loose in Stanhope ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... things. I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe, the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of having been ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... control, she dreamed continually of horrors. Horrors in which neither Hugo nor mamma had part: of giant machines crashing through floors upon screaming girls, of great crowded buildings falling down with frightful uproars and bedlam shrieks. Through these phantasms the tall figure of Colonel Dalhousie perpetually moved, smiling softly. But when Cally met the doctor of the Dabney House in her dreams, the trust was gone from ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... London, and then walked back to Nottingham. The jaunt, if such an expression is applicable, cost him eleven shillings less fourpence. Yet he paid his way. The only money he spent to gain admission to public places was a penny to see Bedlam. ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... him, 'tisn't no fits at all, he's nout the worse o't. Jest silly a bit now and again. It's been the same a dozen year and more; and the doctor knows all about it,' answered the old woman sturdily. 'And ye'll find he'll be as mad as bedlam if ye make any ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of the town concerning the exact hour of his arrival with his somewhat apprehensive bride. There was a wild scurrying after tin pans and bells and other objects which were effective as producers of bedlam, but Joe sent a friend forth with a bill of high denomination and the suggestion that the "boys" break it at Bill Williams's saloon, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... the miracle had been seen equally by a number of other people, who though Jansenists, it is true, were persons of sound sense, good character, and excellent reputation. Some would send the man to Bedlam, "but you after a grave reprimand, will be content with saying: I know that two or three witnesses, good people and of sound sense, may attest the life or the death of a man, but I do not know how ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... sketch of peeling and eating an apple, and he strolled up afterwards and demanded to have his name inserted. More delay; then "the gentleman from Somewhere-else" informs the Speaker that there is not a quorum. "The gentleman from Bedlam" demands a division taken by tellers, and the Speaker agrees, and is just appointing the tellers, when "the gentleman from Obstructianna" calls for "Yeas and Nays," which means, gentle reader, that the whole of the House of Representatives have to be called out by name, from Alpha to Omega. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain't going to let the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... spectator, not knowing the meaning of the war, this charge must have seemed like some mad Bedlam let loose. Strong men lunging, stabbing, fighting, with only death in their hearts—and ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... The bedlam that now broke loose exceeded all that had gone before. The uproar drowned the voice of the orator within, and even, for the time, called a halt upon the raging elements without. The speech was never concluded. What might have been the closing words of McKenzie's ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... it is," said the Englishman, "that I should give any credence to a faith which (craving your forgiveness) most men out of Bedlam concur, at this day, in condemning as wholly idle and absurd. For it may be presumed that men only incline to some unpopular theory in proportion as it flatters or favours them; and as for this theory of yours—of ours, if ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bedlam of fowls about to be decapitated and the shrieks of the troopers vied with each other for supremacy. Piang was being lionized by the men, toasted and ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... ere a hundred and twenty thousand hornets, wasps, scorpions, and centipedes, two or three thousand hedge-hogs, and as many porcupines, seemed to be full drive at me; and had I not soon been relieved by perspiration, I should assuredly have gone mad, and been in bedlam. Nervous headache! Why, madam, it would have been considered paradise, compared with the purgatory you ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... quoted Shakspeare as much in the servants' hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must induce him to go into Bedlam for a month or two. The disappearance of the waiting-woman is natural; either I or Lady Ellinor send her about her business for her folly in being so gulled by the lunatic. If that's unjust, why, injustice to servants is common enough, public and private; neither ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mad Toms of Bedlam, fellows who counterfeit madness in the streets, and after beating themselves about, spit out some blood, in order to convince the too feeling multitude that they have injured themselves by violent struggles, and so ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... the people were leaving Wolcottville the entire village seemed to be a bedlam. Dea Ebenezer Rood was set upon while in his sleigh, and some of the mob endeavored to overturn him and cause his horses to run away. But the blood of his Puritan ancestors became rampant, and in defiance he shouted: ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... was now a screaming, tossing bedlam, the ring a welter. He heard English barking at him. Cover up! He was covered up. Blam! He dropped and rolled away and came again erect. And blam! He was covered up, as much as any man could cover. And then a glove sank ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... in their arms. Bedding, household furniture of every description, pet animals and trinkets, luggage and packages of every sort packed almost every foot of space near the ferry building. Men spread bedding on the pavement and calmly slept the sleep of exhaustion, while all around a bedlam of confusion reigned. ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... bits of ones, but when the grown people wanted to "shout," I would not let them, and the occasion closed by their "drawing" candy from C. as they passed out. I daresay this sounds pleasant, and I know they all had a good time; but if you could have looked in, you would have thought it Bedlam let loose! ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... persons present fell at first breathlessly silent, watching the gallant but quite hopeless adventure. Then, in sheer sympathy with a good man in trouble, one after another we rushed in to help, till the constitution of the University must have seemed indeed a thing of Bedlam to our smiling but much- puzzled guest; and all our cheeks were red. But M. Renan cut the knot. Since he could not understand, and we could not explain, what the constitution of Oxford University was, he suavely ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an exceeding pity for him, and I touched Black on the arm and was about to plead with him; but at the sight of me he raised his fist, and I moved away, seeing by the light of his eyes that he was as much a madman in that moment as any maniac in Bedlam. For he stood foaming and muttering, his hands clenched, his hat upon the snow, great drops of sweat on his bronzed forehead. The haste of the men to get the picks was not half haste enough for him; and when they began to dig he hurried them the more, until a great ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... comedy all Bedlam seems to be let loose on the stage, and every character has a high claim to an apartment in it. It is indeed suspected that the cardinal had a hand in this anomalous drama, and in spite of its extravagance it was favourably ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... catch-pole, as if he had arrested him, but furious Hamlet woulde presently eyther breake loose like a beare from the stake, or else so set his pawes on this dog that thus bayted him that, with tugging and tearing one another's frockes off, they both looked like mad Tom of Bedlam."—Decker's Dead Terme, 1608. "If any passenger come by and, wondering to see such a conjuring circle kept by hel-houndes, demaund what spirits they raise there, one of the murderers steps to him, poysons him with sweete wordes and shifts him off with this lye, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... strange that Mr. Sleuth said nothing of the hoarse cries which had made of the road outside a perfect Bedlam every hour or two throughout that day. But no, Mr. Sleuth made no allusion to what might well have disturbed any quiet ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... was broken by the sound of bells ringing so violently that it seemed as if all Bedlam had broken loose. Around a curve and down the road in front of them loomed Miriam's blacks, making straight for the other group. They were going like the wind, and the empty sleigh, lying on its ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... said at last. "I was coming quietly along, when suddenly Bedlam broke loose, and I have been standing by to go about ever since. No extra lunatics seemed to be needed, or I should have ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... Bedlam, the celebrated receptacle for lunatics, is situated in St. George's-fields, within five minutes' walk of the King's Bench. There is also another noble establishment in the neighbourhood of Finsbury-square, where the unhappy victims of extraordinary delusions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... always happy, are we not Agathe?' The tears stood in Agathe's eyes, and Louis Herbois went on. 'Well, the revolution was nothing to me, they were mad with it, and killed the king, and slew each other, until our dear Paris became a bedlam—still, as I said, it was nothing to me. To be sure, I went occasionally to Calais, where I heard a new language in every body's mouth, and much talk of Les hommes suspects, Mandats d'arrets, with shouts of Abas les aristocrates, and Vive la Republique—but I did not trouble myself about ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... scarcely believed that a man, With his senses about him could form such a plan, And thought that as Bedlam was so very nigh, You had better been there than ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... with Bedlam freed, And wide the gates were flung; To chaos, while the anarch breed In all the world gave tongue, The common men in close array, By mountain, plain and sea, Went outward girded for the fray, On one dear quest, whate'er they pay In blood and ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... recollections or the forms of the antique. The subjects that he treated were relatively modern, taken from the history of the Middle Ages, from Dante, Shakspere, Goethe, Lord Byron, or Walter Scott." He painted "Hamlet," "The Boat of Dante," "Tasso in Bedlam," "Marino Faliero," "The Death of Sardanapalus," "The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha," "The Massacre of the Bishop of Liege," and similar subjects. Goethe in his conversations with Eckerman expressed great admiration of Delacroix's interpretations of scenes in "Faust" (the brawl in Auerbach's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was already converted. In a letter written at this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with great humility "as a convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock to others, than to advance their faith," though he adds, with reason enough, "that he who can ascribe an amendment of life and manners, and a reformation of the heart itself, to madness is guilty of ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... if men, instead of standing god-like erect, had been great balls of flesh, rolling along the ground as best they could,—if Young's poetical figure had been a practical truth, and this globe were the Bedlam of the universe,—if the fixity of Nature had been shattered, and we sat down at our feasts to find the soup bitter as strychnine, the wine changed into vinegar, and mild ale fiery as vitriol? What if wrinkles and gray hairs came in the twinkling of an eye,—if children were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... rest in an enthusiasm for "developing the country." The mania for speculation was nearly universal, especially in the new Western States. Illinois alone projected 1,350 miles of railroad, without money and without credit to carry out this Bedlam legislation, and in almost every village there were "corner lots" enough to be sold to make a great city. Aside from this participation in a bubble destined to burst, and to be followed by disasters, bankruptcies, and universal distress, Lincoln was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... welcome to it: who of mortals would read it, were it made never so lucid to him? Such traits of Friedrich as can be sifted out into the conceivable and indubitable state, the reader shall have; the extinct Bedlam, that begirdled Friedrich far and wide, need not be resuscitated except for that object. Of Friedrich's fairness, or of Friedrich's "trickiness, machiavelism and attorneyism," readers will form their own notion, as they proceed. On one point ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... cries; Brains are dash'd against plashing ears; Hah! no time has battle for tears; Cursing helps better—cursing, that goes Slipping through friends' blood, athirst for foes'. What have soldiers with tears to do?— We, who this mad-house must now go through, This twenty-fold Bedlam, let loose with knives— To murder, and stab, and grow liquid with lives— Gasping, staring, treading red mud, Till the drunkenness' self ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... members came together for consultation as to ways and means for giving the American Socialist movement a revolutionary character in harmony with all the significance of November 7th, the most glorious date in all history. At the hour of that little meeting bedlam reigned in the streets of Chicago by premature celebration of peace. The calling of this meeting during the mass tumult of November 7th is prophetic of the revolutionary vision which brought these Comrades together. On that ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... and dropped through a mat of brambles, dragging my rug after me. The fall landed me on all-fours upon the sunken high road, along which I ran as one demented—stark naked, too—a small Jack of Bedlam under the broadening eye of day; ran past Miss Belcher's entrance gate with its sentinel masses of tall laurels, and had reached the bend of the road opening the low cottage into view, when a sudden jingling of bells and tramp of horses drove me aside through a gate on the left, to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dryden, during a literary life of forty years, obtained from the booksellers. [191] Verrio's assistant and successor, Lewis Laguerre, came from France. The two most celebrated sculptors of that day were also foreigners. Cibber, whose pathetic emblems of Fury and Melancholy still adorn Bedlam, was a Dane. Gibbons, to whose graceful fancy and delicate touch many of our palaces, colleges, and churches owe their finest decorations, was a Dutchman. Even the designs for the coin were made by French artists. Indeed, it was not till the reign of George the Second that our country ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in," he suggested. "When Tavish shows up the dogs will raise bedlam and wake us. Throw out Tavish's blankets and put your own in his bunk. I prefer the floor. Always did. Nothing ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... the man who is sound at each particular angle? Ay, meditates the recumbent cynic, more or less mad is not every mother's son? Favourable circumstances—good air, good company, two or three good rules rigidly adhered to—keep the world out of Bedlam. But, let the world fly into a passion, and is not Bedlam the safest abode ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in the Rake's Progress is perhaps superior to the last scenes of Timon. If we seek for something of kindred excellence in poetry, it must be in the scenes of Lear's beginning madness, where the King and the Fool and the Tom-o'-Bedlam conspire to produce such a medley of mirth checked by misery, and misery rebuked by mirth; where the society of those "strange bedfellows" which misfortunes have brought Lear acquainted with, so finely ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... from four gentlemen looking at four dismounted guns. However, governments, like men, have their whims; and it is of very little use trying to talk them out of their fallacies. It is as likely, that, when meeting a maniac in Bedlam, who fancies himself Napoleon Buonaparte, or any other pagod, you will be able to point out the delusion under which he labours, and to assure him that his social position, though respectable, was never ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... are mainly spent in considering bank-rates, bimetallism, and sewage, could collect pictures of permanent value is on the face of it as wild a folly as ever tried the strength of the strait waistcoats of Hanwell or Bedlam. But as Manchester and Liverpool enjoy as fair a measure of sanity as the rest of the kingdom, we perforce must admit the theory of unconscious ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... the door, good John! fatigu'd, I said, Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The Dog-star rages! nay't is past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, 5 They rave, recite, and ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... literary honors conferred by Cambridge on its students: these are his tutor's very words, therefore I leave you to imagine how delighted and grateful we all are; indeed, the day we received the intelligence, we all, with my father at our head, looked more like hopeful candidates for Bedlam than any thing else. My poor father jumped, and clapped his hands, and kissed the letter, like a child; as my mother says, "I am glad he has one gleam of sunshine, at least;" he sadly wanted it, and I know nothing that could have given ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... hero kept his promise, until his uncle Sir Theophilus was very undecided, whether he should send him home to be locked up in a Lunatic Asylum, or bring him on in the service to the rank of post-captain. Upon mature consideration, however, as a man in Bedlam is a very useless member of society, and a tee-total non-productive, whereas a captain in the navy is a responsible agent, the Admiral came to the conclusion, that Littlebrain ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... it produced lasting benefits to these institutions in Russia. In 1827, I informed your dear mother that I had presented to the Emperor Nicholas a statement of the defects of the Government Lunatic Asylum, which could only be compared to our own old Bedlam in London, fifty years since; and that the dowager Empress had sent for me to the Winter Palace, when she most kindly, and I may say, joyfully, informed me that she and her august son, the Emperor, had visited together this abode of misery. They were convinced of the necessity, ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... sudden commotion. A scream was cut off sharply. Scurried movement became bedlam. Uproar ceased as if a knife had cut through a ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... I had to take all that nasty raw meat out of the back seat and throw it out in the ditch to the dogs, and stand up all the way home, bruised as I was, to keep him from falling off the seat. We were in a perfect bedlam there for a while, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to anybody. Nobody cares what happens ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... occurs in Bedlam we find the key which admits us to much of the symbolism of this drama. We are conducted into the madhouse to visit the broken-hearted wife, and are there introduced into our still-existing society, formal, monotonous, cold, and about to be dissolved. Our hero had himself married the Past, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam; if either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together so powerfully, as to remain united. But there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling ideas together is in ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... were on the street—a street lined with fine wide houses of a bygone time, but which was now a bedlam of throaty voices, a whirling current of alien people, a miasma of stale smells. The taxi soon whirled them out of this section and into another, equally old, but still clinging to its ancient state. The houses were square fronted and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... the civill warres, Tom Bedlam's did travell about the countrey. They had been poore distracted men that had been putt into Bedlam, where recovering to some sobernesse they were licentiated to goe a begging: e. g. they had on their left arm an armilla of tinn, printed in some workes, about ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... laid out absolutely naked and bare, with all the utter nakedness of your inward life this day; were all your secret thoughts, and all your stealthy schemes, and all your mad imaginations, and all your detestable motives, and all your hatreds like hell, and all your follies like Bedlam to be laid naked—I suppose the horror of it would make you cry to the rocks and the mountains to cover you this Sabbath night, or the weeds of the nearest sea to wrap you down into its depths. It would be hell before ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... miles to north and south of us, other flares light up the countryside. At the same instant there breaks out the boom of our heavy guns, the sharp staccato of sixty-pounders, the dull roar of howitzers, and the ear-splitting clamour of whizz-bangs—a bedlam of noise. Shells whistle and whine overhead; they cannot be distinguished one from another, but merge ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... usual business done, W. Hewer and I to look my wife at the Black Lion, Mercer's, but she is gone home, and so I home and there dined, and W. Batelierand W. Hewer with us. All the afternoon I at the Office, while the young people went to see Bedlam, and at night home to them and to supper, and pretty merry, only troubled with a great cold at this time, and my eyes very bad ever since Monday night last that the light of the candles spoiled me. So to bed. This morning, among other things, talking with ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... and answering cries, were turning the silence into a bedlam. From every side the cries arose, and the dogs betrayed their fear by huddling together and so close to the fire that their hair was scorched by the heat. Bill threw on more ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... but kennel-raked fluff, and his discourse is rather like fruit cane up rotten from the ground, than freshly gathered from the Tree. He is so far from a courtly wit, as his breeding seems only to have been i' th' Suburbs; or at best, he seems only graduated good company in a Tavern (the Bedlam of wits) where men are mad rather than merry; here one breaking a jest on the Drawer, or a Candlestick; there another repeating the old end of a Play, or some bawdy song; this speaking bilk, that nonsense, whilst all with loud houting ...
— Essays on Wit No. 2 • Richard Flecknoe and Joseph Warton
... it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... a son and not know it?" exclaimed Hannah, her amazement fast rising to alarm, for she was beginning to suppose her visitor a maniac escaped from Bedlam. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... imagination of the rarest power could conceive such a denouement, requiting a life of black ingratitude by no mere common horrors, no vulgar Bedlam frenzy; but by the torturing apprehension of a happiness never quite grasped, always just beyond the verge of realisation. Only an imagination of the finest and rarest touch, absolutely certain of tread on that path of a single hair which alone connects this world with the land of dreams. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... A bedlam of noise and struggle. Men fought with one another blindly, cursing soldiers fired promiscuously among the mob, riddling the walls, stabbing at the air. The plaster was falling in great chunks everywhere, filling the rooms with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... the cries of the frantic, and again supplying water to quench thirst. On a round table that stands in the centre of the room is a large medicine-chest, disclosing papers, pills, powders, phials, and plasters, strewn about in great disorder. A bedlam of ghastly faces presents itself,—dark, haggard, and frantic with the pains of the malady preying upon the victims. One poor wretch springs from his couch, crying, "Oh, death! death! come soon!" and his ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live for hours at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never before realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. But these people—even the children—seemed oblivious to the din and the danger, intent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... room grew warmer, the conversation waxed louder, the dance faster and the whoops of exuberance more frequent, until Bedlam reigned. Percy Parrot chancing to observe "Tinhorn Frank" sliding toward the door with two unopened bottles of champagne protruding from his coat pockets made a low tackle and clasped him about the ankles. As "Tinhorn" lay prone he was ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... apart from the Castle, and Saint Peter's and the Vatican, are those connected with the Holy Office, the hospital and insane asylum of Santo Spirito, and with the Serristori barracks. In Rome, to go to Santo Spirito means to go mad. It is the Roman Bedlam. But there is another association with the name, and a still sadder one. There, by the gate of the long, low hospital, is still to be seen the Rota—the 'wheel'—the revolving wooden drum, with its small aperture, corresponding to an opening in ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Forsake a bedlam; This note informs me fifteen thousand men Are marching to inclose the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... a hard case," said the Chief Inspector. "A couple of witnesses like you and the jury would retire to Bedlam!" ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... the sound of a heavy body brushing against the side of the cabin. She could hear the great padded paws upon the ground outside. For an instant, all was silence; even the bedlam of the forest died to a faint murmur. Then she distinctly heard the beast outside sniffing at the door, not two feet from where she crouched. Instinctively the girl shuddered, and shrank closer ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Bedlam began again. Like the fool who shouts "Fire!" in a throng, this brainless individual revived all the fears of the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... place for work you've been, But soon a Bedlam once again, A mess, a wreck. But say, I wonder will it make us mad. No, House, I'll bet we both are glad The kid ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... state health and strength, but deprived of reason to act for themselves. And it is, in my opinion, one of the greatest scandals upon the understanding of others to mock at those who want it. Upon this account I think the hospital we call Bedlam to be a noble foundation, a visible instance of the sense our ancestors had of the greatest unhappiness which can befall humankind; since as the soul in man distinguishes him from a brute, so where the soul is dead (for so it is as to acting) no brute so much a beast ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... with Cerberus exchange My office (and his is no sinecure) Than see this royal Bedlam-bigot range[gv] The azure fields of Heaven, of that be sure!" "Saint!" replied Satan, "you do well to avenge The wrongs he made your satellites endure; And if to this exchange you should be given, I'll try to coax our Cerberus ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... convention, a law of society, an arbitrary institute, and therefore a possible mistake. A sage and a maniac each thinks the other mad. The decision is a matter of majorities. Should a whole community become insane, it would nevertheless vote itself wise; if the craze of Bedlam were uniform, its inmates could not distinguish it from a Pantheon; and though all human history seemed to the gods only as a continuous series of mediaeval processions des sots et des anes, yet the topsy-turvy intellect of the world would ever ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... But havin' no business of me own on the place, I stayed behind, a listenin'. An', purty soon up pipes the beautiful music; an' right atop o' that comes—bedlam! All the dogs a barkin', the women servants screeching, the old gentleman commandin', and me colleen huggin' the Angel tight an' saying never a say, though the poor Dago Eyetalian was trembling himself into his grave, till all a sudden like, up flies Glory, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... storm, Tom Slade paused to think. All about them was Bedlam. Down the precipitous mountainside hard by, were crashing the torn and uprooted trophies of the storm high in those dizzy recesses above, where eagles, undisturbed by any human presence, made their homes upon the crags. The rending and crashing up ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a glance, in this incomprehensible farrago, the argot of the true alchemist. Ripley, Flamel, and others have supplied the world, in their works, with the melancholy spectacle of a scientific bedlam. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... was equally deplorable. The awful words pronounced by Merton may be considered his death-knell. They rang ever after in his ears; and, in a few weeks, his head was turned, his shop shut up, and himself sent to Bedlam. "Gracious heavens, what a nose!" This dreadful sentence—more dreadful than the hand-writing on the wall to Belshazzar,—haunted him by day and by night. Reason was dethroned, and "moody madness, laughing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... why I was confined, would of course continue to style myself by my true name; and as long as I did this, so long would I be considered in a deranged state. The reader must not therefore be surprised when I tell him that I remained in Bedlam for one year and eight months. The doctor called upon me for two or three days, and finding me quiet, ordered me to be allowed books, paper, and ink, to amuse myself; but every attempt at explanation was certain to be the signal for him to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance to sit down with you where it's—quiet and we don't have to feel in a hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to be ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... next to an exceptionally clean-cut young fellow of about his own age. This youth appeared a fine specimen of the sane, wholesome, successful young American business man. Yet he was behaving like a madman, yelling like Bedlam, wildly flaunting his hat—a splendid-looking Panama—now and then savagely brandishing his fists at an unseen foe. Queed heard him saying fiercely, apparently to the world at large: "They couldn't lick us now. By the Lord, they couldn't lick ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... deportment, so graceful in figure, and so comely in looks, that he had excited no little admiration as he rode forth at an early hour that morning from Bishopgate Street, and passing under the wide portal in the old city walls, speeded towards the then rural district of Shoreditch, leaving Old Bedlam and its saddening associations on the right, and Finsbury Fields, with its gardens, dog-houses, and windmills, on the left. At the end of Bishopgate-Street-Without a considerable crowd was collected round a party of comely young milkmaids, who were executing a lively ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... favorite topic for experiment in the laboratory. The subject is put to work adding or typewriting, and works for a time in quiet, after which disturbances are introduced. A bell rings, a phonograph record is played, perhaps a perfect bedlam of noise is let loose; with the curious result that the subject, only momentarily distracted, accomplishes more work rather than less. The distraction has acted as a stimulus to greater effort, and by this effort {260} is overcame. This does not always ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... woman's tongue for foolishness. I've heared a saying too in my family, which be—get a female on to your hearth and 'tis Bedlam straight away. ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... was cold! Bedlam in the next room, and he was lonely! His sensations were getting out of hand, beyond the remedial influences and friendly fraternal sounds of this world he had so long tenanted. By a score of years he had exceeded his due claim upon earth's good offices to man. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... nickname for vagrants who infested England in Tudor times. The phrase is certainly as old as 1561, and was due to these beggars pretending that they were patients discharged from the Abraham ward at Bedlam. The genuine Bedlamite was allowed to roam the country on his discharge, soliciting alms, provided he wore a badge. This humane privilege was grossly abused, and thus gave rise to the slang phrase ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... so farre, revoke to minde the bedlam boy. That in his forged wings of waxe reposed too great ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... anything," he answered shortly. "I don't think anything, except that the Forward is a ship belonging to the devil, or madmen fit for nothing but Bedlam." ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... followed suit, Kelly might have divided with his opponents the honour of Cleveland's nomination. Instead, it practically voted as before. But Albany, Rensselaer, and other counties, catching the tide at its turn, threw the convention into a bedlam. Finally, when Kelly could secure recognition, he changed ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... world, waiting for it to return to reason. In his fiery black eyes one may see a puzzled look as he views the bewildering show. He is confused, but defiant. His head is still high; he has no thought of surrender. So, day after day, he riddles the bedlam about him with his broadsides, in ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... he came to his own doorway he knew that even his tardiness could not justify the bedlam of sound that came from within. High-pitched voices. Bella's above all the rest, of course, but there was Minnie's too, and Gus's growl, and Pearlie's treble, and the ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber |
