"Bedlam" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grotesque orang-outang's figure in a pier-glass? Was but the lovely H—k as much enamored, you would not sigh, my gentle swain, in vain. But your vanity is preposterous. How will this same bard of Bedlam ring the changes in the praise of Goldy! But what has he to be either proud or vain of? The Traveler is a flimsy poem, built upon false principles—principles diametrically opposite to liberty. What is The Good-Natured Man but a poor, water-gruel dramatic dose? What is The Deserted ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the independence of Lithuania and Livonia were symptoms of nationalist agitation in different parts of Russia, supported, said Miliukov, by German money. Amid bedlam from the Left, he contrasted the clauses of the nakaz concerning Alsace-Lorraine, Rumania, and Serbia, with those treating of the nationalities in Germany and Austria. The nakaz embraced the German and Austrian point of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."[251-2] ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... heart stopped beating—I had lost the game—and then Marston leaped in the air—surely it must have been four feet—caught the ball with his left hand and dropped back on the bag. The sound of his foot on it and the runner's was almost simultaneous, but the umpire said Marston's was there first. Then bedlam! One of my brothers was umpire and the captain of the other team walked threateningly out toward him, followed by two of his men with base-ball bats. As I started off myself towards them I saw, with the corner of my eye, another brother of mine ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... Machinery is being used to produce ornament that nobody ever looks at and architecture that nobody wants to look at. Machinery is taking suicides to Monte Carlo and coals to Newcastle, and all normal human purpose and intelligence to Bedlam; and our critics gaze at it reverently and ask us how we expect ever to be ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... clashing of horns, the bellowing, the rumble of the wagons over the rocks and the ring of iron-shod hoofs, created a bedlam of sound, which echoed and re-echoed from the towering walls until ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... you know! But you must have observed, my dear Ptitsin, that I did all I possibly could. I could do no more than I did. And you must admit that there are some rare qualities in this woman. I felt I could not speak in that Bedlam, or I should have been tempted to cry out, when she reproached me, that she herself was my best justification. Such a woman could make anyone forget all reason—everything! Even that moujik, Rogojin, you saw, brought her a hundred thousand roubles! ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Nonsense, boy, nonsense; it was as real as anything could be.—What? It must be fancy, or you would have run to his side and spoken? It would have been fancy if you had. Madness! Folly! Bedlam-ish lunacy. Why, you would have spoiled everything. Poor old Hal—poor old Hal! ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... scramble, brawl, fracas, rhubarb [baseball], fight, free-for-all, row, ruction, rumpus, embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c. 349; bear garden, Babel, Saturnalia, donnybrook, Donnybrook Fair, confusion worse confounded, most admired disorder, concordia discors[Lat]; Bedlam, all hell broke loose; bull in a china shop; all the fat in the fire, diable a' quatre[Fr], Devil to pay; pretty kettle of fish; pretty piece of work[Fr], pretty piece of business[Fr]. [legal terms] disorderly person; disorderly persons offence; misdemeanor. [moral disorder] slattern, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... we went to a place where we heard a terrible noise, a medley of striking, jabbering, crying and laughing, shouting and singing. "Here's Bedlam, doubtless," said I. By the time we entered the den the brawling had ceased. Of the company, one was on the ground insensible; another was in a yet more deplorable condition; another was nodding over a hearthful of battered pots, pieces of pipes, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... seek the Lord, and fight the Lord's battles; if he introduced the Jewish jargon into the parliament of England, to the eternal shame of the human intelligence, he would be nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... a picture by that strange and unmatchable English artist of the Eighteenth Century, William Hogarth, of the mad house in London know as Bedlam. If he were here, he might draw a companion picture of the Tombs. The one is as much as the other a crazy, incoherent, irrational, futile place, yet embodying very accurately a certain aspect of the civic attitude toward the insanity of vice and crime of the day. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... of "Question, question!" "Divide, divide!" sank into reluctant silence as Audley Egerton rose to conclude the debate,—the man of men to speak late at night, and to impatient benches: a man who would be heard; whom a Bedlam broke loose would not have roared down; with a voice clear and sound as a bell, and a form as firmly set on the ground as a church-tower. And while, on the dullest of dull questions, Audley Egerton thus, not too lively himself, enforced attention, where was Harley ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Shak-speare: his True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters. With the vnfortunate life of Edgar, sonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and assumed humor of Tom of Bedlam: As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall vpon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. By his Majesties seruants playing vsually at the Gloabe on the Bancke-side. London, Printed for Nathaniel Butter, and are to be sold at ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... 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
... on the manner in which the name is brought out, which I value myself on, as a chef d'oeuvre. How the paper grows less and less! In less than two minutes I shall cease to talk to you, and you may rave to the Great Wall of China. N.B.—Is there such a wall? Is it as big as Old London Wall by Bedlam? Have you met with a friend of mine named Ball at Canton? If you are acquainted, remember me kindly to him. Maybe you'll think I have not said enough of Tuthill and the Holcrofts. Tuthill is a noble fellow, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... like the voice of one who has given up all hope, the voice of one who has arisen from the grave. In that cold mask of a face I could see no glimmer of the old-time joy, the joy of the season when wild roses were aglow. We both were silent, two pitifully cold beings, while about us the howling bedlam of pleasure-plotters ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... filmy threads of this web of life in which we insects buzz awhile, waiting for the gray old spider to come along; contented enough with daily realities, but twirling on his finger the key of a private Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,—loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... his "religion" to seek, and painfully shape together for himself, out of the abysses of conflicting disbelief and sham-belief and bedlam delusion, now filling the world, as all men of reflection have; and in this respect too,—more especially as his lot in the battle appointed for us all was, if you can understand it, victory and not defeat,—he ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... rarity. Now that they have me no longer, what are they doing? They find time as heavy as if they were dogs. I am an inexhaustible bagful of impertinences. Every minute I had some fantastic notion that made them laugh till they cried; I was a whole Bedlam in myself. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... and money are against us; the least of these is singly a match for truth; we shall die of despair or paint cobwebs in Bedlam; and I am faint, weary of a hopeless struggle; and one man's brush is truer than mine, another's is bolder—my hand and eye are not in tune. Ah! no! I shall never, ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... long time ago, before the flame of gas was seen in the streets, or the sounds of the railroad were heard in the land; so long before, that, had any prophet then living foretold such magical doings, he would have been deemed a fit inhabitant of Bedlam. In those primitive times, the Widow Lawton was considered a rich woman, though her income would not go far toward clothing a city-fashionable in these days. She owned a convenient house on the sea-shore, some twelve or fifteen miles from Cape Ann; she ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... lady have 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
... a raving bedlam of noise and menace. The Scottish archers did not dare to make any attempt to recapture their escaped prisoner, but kept their line in front of the royal dais, while Villon stood by the side of Katherine with drawn sword, an archangel ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... 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 ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... out of the question for him to follow any settled policy. He wrote to Seagrove: "It is no wonder the Indians are distracted, when they are tampered with on every side. I am myself in the situation of a keeper of Bedlam, and nearly fit for an inhabitant." [Footnote: American State Papers, IV., McGillivray to Seagrove, May 18, 1793.] However, what he did amounted to but little, for his influence had greatly waned, ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... hand the paper was delivered. Then came the storm. Juno, as in the Aeneid, delegated the work of vengeance to Alecto. The Queen was calm and gentle; but Madame Schwellenberg raved like a maniac in the incurable ward of Bedlam! Such insolence! Such ingratitude! Such folly! Would Miss Burney bring utter destruction on herself and her family? Would she throw away the inestimable advantage of royal protection? Would she part with privileges which, once relinquished, could never be regained? It was idle ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... going for?" asked Bob. "Don't you know you will be in the midst of terrible fighting? You can't solve any problems there. It will be a bedlam of noise." ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... succeeded in misleading the population 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
... agony were heard on every side. The surgeons were busy with their glittering instruments. The tramp of men on the decks overhead, and the creaking of the timbers of the water-logged ship, added to the cries of the wounded, made a perfect bedlam ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... in discussion, flat contradiction is contemptible. Dean Swift affirms that a person given to contradiction is more fit for Bedlam than for conversation. In discussion, far more than in lighter talk, decency as well as honor commands that each partner to the conversational game conform to the niceties and fairness of it. "I don't think so," "It isn't so," "I don't ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... shoulders, "that ye could not count twenty straight ahead, if your salvation depended on it. And to think that I have been raising a great fellow like you to be ordered about by a slip of a girl. Ye're crazy," he said, going on, "stark, Bedlam crazy!" ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... She clapped her hands, and in rushed the three children like Bedlam let loose, careering round and about the three, shouting, laughing, and begging to be took also. Raisins and oranges from George Anne's reticule alone restored them ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... and had to be done over again; a wordy war ensued between landlord, waiters and chambermaids, each one having an original idea for our comfort and wanting their own way. The small Bedlam that went on would have been diverting at any other time. It was very nearly two o'clock before we closed the door upon the world, and felt that something like peace ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... specimens of the coveted fruit, scarcely allowing himself time to breathe until he had filled his old straw hat, and all his pockets, with apples. To help laughing was impossible; while this new Tom o' Bedlam darted from the house, and scampered across the field for dear life, as if afraid that we should pursue him, to rob him of ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... earth is the matter?" he asked. "It seems like Bedlam broken loose. Is there an insurrection ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... these 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
... and spirit fails in satire for the same simple reason that it fails in war: it despises the enemy. In matters of battle and conquest we have got firmly rooted in our minds the idea (an idea fit for the philosophers of Bedlam) that we can best trample on a people by ignoring all the particular merits which give them a chance of trampling upon us. It has become a breach of etiquette to praise the enemy; whereas when the enemy is strong every honest scout ought to ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... child!" she exclaimed, seizing her arm and pouncing one stiffly gloved hand on the sparkling brooch; "you've stolen that! It's bad enough to be run into by a dirty little thing fresh from Bedlam, without being wicked into the ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... childhood, I had imbibed a taste and now they came back to me as if in the dotage of grief. Alas, I feel how much even of incipient madness might have been discovered in the gorgeous and fantastic draperies, in the solemn carvings of Egypt, in the wild cornices and furniture, in the Bedlam patterns of the carpets of tufted gold! I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a coloring from my dreams. But these absurdities must not pause to detail. Let me speak ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... upon the folk of the quarter, "Do ye of your grace and benevolence to us seize the Kazi and carry him to the Maristan that they may confine him therein until he return to his reason and regain his right mind." Hereupon they laid hands upon him and bore him to the Bedlam and imprisoned him therein amongst the maniacs, and it was certified to all the folk that their Kazi had been suddenly struck by insanity and that they had confined him in the madhouse. Now all this was of the cunning ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... he 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. He was a trespasser and an alien ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... most edifying uproar of shouting, bellowing, crying, clapping and stamping, mingled with hysterical laughing, termed out there "holy laughing," and even dancing! and barking! called also "holy!"—till, at the partial subsidence of the bedlam, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... There was bedlam in that dank pass to the region of shades, and no quarter was shown to any man; only cries of "The String! The String!" from members of the gang in order to distinguish the robbers from the robbed, in the darkness. There were curses, the kicking and squealing of horses ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill
... A bedlam of raucous, clamorous shrieks settling into a crude sort of war cry brought all four of them to their feet. Wilson thrust the girl back of him towards the cave-like formation behind them. This effectually protected them in the rear ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Olson's remark helped to clear the atmosphere for the Allies at least, and then our attention was once more directed toward the river, for around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them. There were all sorts and conditions of ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... as she soared to the crest of a wave and cleft its foaming summit in a blinding deluge of spray that swept her decks from the weather cat-head right aft to the companion, and plunging next moment into the trough with a strong roll to windward, and a very bedlam of yells and shrieks aloft as the gale swept between her straining masts and rigging. She shuddered as if terrified at every headlong plunge that she took, while the milk-white spume brimmed to the level of her figure-head, and roared away ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... no means. And yet need I suggest to your lordship, that those who find the means, and those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On considering the strange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of artificial reason, I have somewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies, may we not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of the universe? Indeed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating with the frenzy and villany of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... The bedlam which had broken loose when Podmore was freed had trailed out to a scatter of noise in the distance. Far away the shrieks of the half-demented man of money still rose above the shouting and cat-calls, but they were growing less frequent and fainter. ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... painted face seen by daylight. Thick, malodorous vapours arose from the squalid streets, lying back on the level, and from the crowded shipping of the port. These hung in the stagnant air, about the forest of masts and the funnels of steamers. And the noise of the place was as that of Bedlam let loose.—The long-drawn, chattering rush of the coal pitched from the baskets down the echoing, iron shoots. The grate and scream of saws cutting through blocks of stone and marble. The grind of heavy wheels upon the broken, irregular flags. The struggling clatter of hoofs, lashing ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... draggin' from her shoulders down to de ground. Me, I laked milk more'n anything else. You jus' oughta seed dat place at milkin' time. Dere was a heap of cows a fightin', chillun hollerin', and sich a bedlam as you can't think up. Dat old plantation was a grand place for chillun, in summertime 'specially, 'cause dere was so many branches and cricks close by what us chillun could hop in and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... and 'hamper'; 'puisne' and 'puny'; 'patron' and 'pattern'; 'spital' (hospital) and 'spittle' (house of correction); 'accompt' and 'account'; 'donjon' and 'dungeon'; 'nestle' and 'nuzzle'{114} (now obsolete); 'Egyptian' and 'gypsy'; 'Bethlehem' and 'Bedlam'; 'exemplar' and 'sampler'; 'dolphin' and ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... housed and welcomed with a hospitality and warmth that one never sees outside the army. Every set of officers' quarters, therefore, was crowded to its full capacity, and a thing that never before had happened in the chronicles of the old frontier post was now a matter of course. Even "Bedlam," the ramshackle, two-story frame rookery, once sacred to the bachelor element, had now two families quartered therein, and one of these comprised the wife, maiden sister, and three children of Captain Forrest, of the ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... 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 ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... troubled brain slips all 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
... spite of his admiration for Gray and his—temporary—interest in Ossian, Chatterton, and Percy's ballads, he ridiculed Mallet's and Gray's Runic experiments, spoke contemptuously of Spenser, Thomson, and Akenside, compared Dante to "a Methodist parson in bedlam," and pronounced "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "forty times more nonsensical than the worst translation of any Italian opera-books."[11] He said that poetry died with Pope, whose measure and manner he employed in his own verses. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... hurls back his hair, and fixes his eyes upon the moon, (who has been looking at him for several minutes through the window opposite.) Full of her influence, and not knowing there is such a place as Bedlam in the world, he starts upon his legs, makes two or three rapid strides up and down the room, like a lion taking exercise, or a lord of council and session in Scotland preparing to pronounce sentence, and means to be delivered (mercy on us!) exactly opposite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... tyranny of Italian example that had made the poets walk in one way of love, scorn, constancy, inconstancy—may have caused this trolling of unconsciousness, this tune of innocence, and this carol of liberty, to be held so dear. "I heard a maid in Bedlam," runs the old song. High and low the poets tried for that note, and the singer was nearly always to be a maid and crazed for love. Except for the temporary insanity so indifferently worn by the soprano of the now deceased kind of Italian opera, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... persons a singular inability to weigh the value of testimony; of which, I think, from a pretty careful examination of his books, Hahnemann affords the best specimen outside the walls of Bedlam. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... active party 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 day the seething proletariat ruled Chicago by sheer force of ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... employ'd, as against that Bishop, who has succeeded Bishop Burnet in being the Subject of Clergy-Ridicule, as well as in his Bishoprick. The Bishop himself was very justly patient, under all Attacks by the Reverend Trapp, Earbery, Snape, Law, and Luke Milbourne, in his Tom of Bedlam's Answer to his Brother Ben Hoadley, St. Peter's Poor Parson near the Exchange of Principles; some of which were of a very abusive kind, and such as can hardly be parallel'd; and did not call upon the Magistrate to come to his Aid against that Author, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... restore the use of my reason, which I had lost when I found myself abandoned by the Count; but, all my connexion with my own family being entirely cut off, and every door shut against a poor creature who could procure no recommendation, except the certificate signed by the physician of Bedlam, which, instead of introducing me to service, was an insurmountable objection to my character, I found myself destitute of all means of subsisting, unless I would condescend to live the infamous and wretched life of a courtezan, an expedient rendered palatable ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... for breakers," said Aunt Hildy, when she saw the child, "this house'll be a bedlam now, but then we were all as leetle as that once, I spos'e," and her duty evidently spoke at that moment, saying, "You must bear with it." But she was ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... having breakfasted, disentangled themselves from the Bedlam of a troop-deck meal, and gained the upper air, they were in better humour to regard their surroundings from a philosophical, if not an appreciative, standpoint. The depressing drizzle had ceased, the clouds were breaking, and the shore, except for the mist-filled nullahs ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... found out hes mistake an' lugged the thing out o' hes pocket, there was Bedlam let loose, for up five minnits, ivery mother's son chitterin' an' laffin, an' the Deacon lookin' like a pig in a fit. He desarted the Seceders that very week, an' niver darken'd the Meetin' House door agen to the day ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rattled on the roof like iron and all the demons in bedlam seemed to be besieging the house. Then a most sickening thing happened. The floor appeared to be heaving under their feet. Doors all over the house banged to with loud reports like revolvers shooting off. There was a crash in the library, a loud cry from within, the ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... buildings at Waterloo-place, opposite Carlton-House, where I was found dead. A few days afterwards, it was declared that they were misinformed as to my death, but that I was taken in a melancholy state of insanity to Bedlam; and the writer gave an account of the incoherent conversation which I had held with Major Cartwright, Mr. Cobbett, and Sir Francis Burdett, who had been to visit me. These accounts were given in such a serious manner, the details were ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Beyond Life—for the most part Mr. Cabell's mouthpiece—to set forth the doctrine that romance is the real demiurge, "the first and loveliest daughter of human vanity," whereby mankind is duped—and exalted. "No one on the preferable side of Bedlam wishes to be reminded of what we are in actuality, even were it possible, by any disastrous miracle, ever to dispel the mist which romance has evoked about all human doings." Therefore romance has created the "dynamic illusions" of chivalry and love and common sense and religion and art ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... that bedlam Blake remained resentfully cool, angrily clear-thoughted. He saw that the steamer did not move forward. He concluded the engine-room to be deserted. And he saw both the futility and the danger ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... the whirling belts, up and down the narrow aisles, 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
... are no men out of Bedlam—or at least who ought to be out of it—and I suspect there are very few men in Bedlam, who are in favour of our going to war with the United States. And in taking this view I am not arguing that it is because we see ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... I've kept aloof From the other world's affairs, Shunning much superfluous cares; But, my courage put to proof, Bid me face a thousand men, And if I don't cut and run From the thousand, nay, from one, Never trust to me again. For I think it quite a case Fit for Bedlam, if so high, That a man would rather die, Than just take a little race. Such a trifle! Sir, to me Life is precious; leave me here, Where you'd find me, ...
— The Purgatory of St. Patrick • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... of requests, at Garraway's, or at White's; would he gain a hearing, unless, perhaps, of some sorry jester who would desire to ridicule him? would he not presently acquire the name of the mad parson, and be thought by all men worthy of Bedlam? or would he not be treated as the Romans treated their Aretalogi,[Footnote: A set of beggarly philosophers who diverted great men at their table with burlesque discourses on virtue.] and considered in the ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... this bedlam of crazed strata, unable to see or guess a way out of it, the wanderers fell asleep. There was no setting of guards; they trusted to ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... priory and hospital of St. Bartholomew, an institution of even greater antiquity, the hospital of St. Thomas, in Southwark, the priory and hospital of St. Mary without Bishopsgate, known as St. Mary of Bethlem, or "Bedlam," and the Abbey of Graces or New Abbey (sometimes called the Eastminster to distinguish it from the other minster in the west of London) which had been founded by Edward III, ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... armed men he came to look them o'er. Nigh to the plain a battle they pitched both stiff and strong. But the lord Cid long-bearded hath overthrown that throng. And even unto Jativa in a long rout they poured. You might have seen all bedlam on the Jucar by the ford, For there the Moors drank water but sore against their will. With bet thee strokes upon him 'scaped the Sovereign of Seville. And then with all that booty the Cid came home again. Great was Valencia's plunder what time the town was ta'en, But that ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... Joan rode between two lines of horses, burros, oxen, mules, packs and loads and canvas-domed wagons and gaudy vehicles resembling gipsy caravans. The street was as busy as a beehive and as noisy as a bedlam. The sidewalks were rough-hewn planks and they rattled under the tread of booted men. There were tents on the ground and tents on floors and tents on log walls. And farther on began the lines of cabins-stores and shops and saloons—and then a great, square, flat structure with a flaring sign ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... came and the first snow, she was furious, perfectly mad. One might as well have had a ball of fire in the house, or chain-lightning; every nice old custom had been invaded, the ancient quiet broken into a Bedlam of outlandish sounds, and as Captain Willoughby was returning, his wife packed the sprite off with him,—to cut, rip, and tear in New Holland, if she liked, but not in New England,—and rejoiced herself that she would find that little brown skin cuddled up in her best down beds and among ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... scoop into the valise I had brought along the seventy thousand bucks in crisp, green lettuce which an awed teller passed across the counter. Then I hurried back to join the others in the winner's circle, where bedlam was not only reigning but pouring. Flashbulbs were popping all over the place, cameramen were screaming for just one more of the jockey, the owner, the fabulous Tapwater. The officials were vainly striving to quiet the tumult so they could award the prize. ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond
... alternately menial and master—supple as the slave, and superb as the minister—I was sent to Eton. At this great school of the aristocracy, would-be and real—barons and dukes in esse, and the herald's office alone, or bedlam, knows what in posse, I remained for the customary number of years. If whoever does me the honour to read these pages, hates the history of schooldays as much as I do their memory, he will easily pardon my passing by the topic altogether. If the first purpose of all ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... this?" said Mrs. Finley, opening the door; "one might as well try to sleep in Bedlam. Merciful man! who broke all those dishes? John Madison Harrison Polk! who broke all ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... The many messages for food which they sent to Martin forced him to spring out of bed and hurry to them, for nothing is as unbearably insistent as a barn and yard full of living things clamoring their determination to have something to eat. As Martin ran to stop the bedlam, he saw the world as an enormous, empty stomach, at the opening of which he stood, hurling in the feed as fast as his muscles would permit. It was all there was to farming—raising crops and then ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was sudden commotion. A scream was cut off sharply. Scurried movement became bedlam. Uproar ceased as if a knife had cut through ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... mad. It seems he had begun to revolve the change of his circumstances in his mind, and again this put him into an ecstasy of joy. His spirits whirled about faster than the vessels could convey them, the blood grew hot and feverish, and the man was as fit for Bedlam as any creature that ever was in it. The surgeon would not bleed him again in that condition, but gave him something to doze and put him to sleep; which, after some time, operated upon him, and he ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... shippin'-office. He wouldn't think it safe to go to sea with too many American sailors forward to call him down and make him treat 'em decent. He picks a Dago here, and a Dutchman there, and all the Sou'wegians he sees, and fills in with the rakin's and scrapin's o' Hell, Bedlam, and Newgate, knowin' they'll hate one another worse than they hate him, and never ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... if that could be said to appear which was hardly discernible in the dim light which came through the half-open door. Hamilton begged one of the boys with him to fetch a light, and taking advantage of the momentary lull, he called out, "Is this Bedlam, gentlemen? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! What's ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... enter a little wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool first entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying that he had seen a spirit. But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more than a poor Bedlam beggar, who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter, and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort charity from the compassionate country people, who go about ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... 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 chance go, ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and the hum of innumerable voices, I was to meet my ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... rope made of rice straw around the carcass, they inserted a thick bamboo pole under the withes. Then swinging the pole over their shoulders, they started off on a dog-trot to the village, shouting as they went. We followed them, and when near the village gate heard a bedlam of unearthly yells and whoops of triumph from all the boys and girls of the village, who were proud of their famous hunter. We had entered into conversation with him, and learned that his name ...
— Harper's Young People, January 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... famous asylum for insane persons, popularly known among the inhabitants of London as "Bedlam," I saw the lawyer start, and exchange a look with the head-clerk. Mr. Hartrey answered with evident reluctance; he said, "Quite right, madam"—and said no more. The lawyer, being the bolder man of the two, added a word of warning, ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Chateaus up-blazing torch the doom of France, While human wolves howl ruin round their walls. Contention hisses from a million mouths, And from ten thousand muttering craters smokes The smell of sulphur. Gaul becomes a ghoul; While Parlez-Tous in hot palaver holds Hubbub ad Bedlam—Pandemonium thriced. There, voices drowning voice with frantic cries, Discord demented flaps her ruffled wings And shrieks delirium to her screeching brood. Sneer-lipped, hawk-eyed, wolf-tongued oraculars— ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... he kept his literature and his hallucinations separate from his business, and never did a thing which did not gibe with his reason. In this way he lived to be eighty, earnest, yet composed, serene, steering safely clear from Bedlam, by making his commonsense ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... consideration of what the bridegroom had been to that community. Horns, trumpets, accordions, fiddles, fire-crackers, tin pans, howls, screeches, huzzas, halloos, missiles striking the front door, and bedlam let loose! Matters grew worse as the night advanced, until the town authorities read the Riot Act, and caused the only cannon belonging to the village to be hauled out on the street and loaded, threatening death to the mob if they did not disperse. Glad am I to say that it was only a ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... conceivable gaits. No spurs were necessary. There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers beside, and they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked them with their spikes, and shouted something that sounded like "Sekki-yah!" and kept up a din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam itself. These rascals were all on foot, but no matter, they were always up to time—they can outrun and outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was a lively and a picturesque procession, and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... fire, the shrill whine of needlers in action, raised a bedlam from the other end of the camp. Backing up a little, Dane went down on one knee, his weapon ready to sweep over the bewildered natives, the drum resting on the earth against his body. Keeping the ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... 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 on this night ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... much would it take to square you?" At once there rose a fierce tropical storm. There were loud shouts of approval—equally loud shouts demanding an instant withdrawal; members rose from every part of the House; in short, it was Bedlam let loose, and a scene ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... moment bedlam broke loose. The Mongol chief sprang from behind his curtain. Other Mongols, deserting all night games of chance, came swarming in on all sides. Their jargon was unintelligible. Johnny could not tell them what had happened, even had he ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... either were to be wished) I would rather have a plain downright wisdom, than a foolish and affected eloquence. For what is so furious and Bedlam like as a vain sound of chosen and excellent words, without any subject of sentence or ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... kitchen stove-hook to the girls best Sunday-go-to-meeting bonnets, were apt to find a lodging at odd times. "I never can be on time," she muttered, slamming things around and comparing various odd rubbers. "This closet looks like a demented bedlam. I'd be ashamed, ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... the girl hurried on. A few hundred yards more, and she would be clear of that awesome Bedlam. She had to pass between some, huts, one of which she could see was in flames. Hard by she could hear the sound of a fiddle, and the excited whoops of dancers. The Red River jig was evidently in full blast. She turned ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... sacred and pure as coming immediately from heaven. The two miracle-mongers had not been above a minute in the Holy Sepulchre when the glimmering of the holy fire was seen, or imagined to appear, through some chinks in the door; and, certainly, Bedlam itself never saw such an unruly transport as was produced in the ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... up from every Gridley seat. The bleachers contributed a bedlam of noise. "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow!" blared forth the band. Girls and women stood up, waving fans, handkerchiefs, banners. Another round of cheering started. Dick walked quietly, looking neither to right nor left. Yet the boy was wondering, in ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... certain that our author for some time was deprived of his senses, and was confined in Bedlam; and as Langbaine observes, it is to be regretted, that his madness exceeded that divine fury which Ovid mentions, and which usually accompany the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... scene which 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
... abomination. There were professed dreamers, and professed interpreters of dreams. One of the most noted festivals among the Hurons and Iroquois was the Dream Feast, a scene of frenzy, where the actors counterfeited madness, and the town was like a bedlam turned loose. Each pretended to have dreamed of something necessary to his welfare, and rushed from house to house, demanding of all he met to guess his secret requirement and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... people were laughing—calling rough jokes back and forth—singing, running, jumping, and dancing, till the whole roadway appeared a merry Bedlam. ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... events in their elementary principles, that had the first colonists of our country ever intimated as a part of their designs the project of founding a great and mighty nation, the finger of scorn would have pointed them to the cells of bedlam as an abode more suitable for hatching vain empires than the solitude ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Charlie," said Beatrice, "I shall end in Bedlam, if you're so very tedious. What in the world I shall do when I'm married, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... 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
... not inclined to dispute that argument; indeed, he felt himself strong enough to protect his wife from all the lunatics in Bedlam. He went towards the end of the corridor, keeping Mary well behind him; but Mary did not mean to lose the opportunity of renewing her acquaintance with ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... particularly those of a destructive intent, which the older reader will appreciate; while on the whole he will wonder whether the author has, in these last four chapters, any other than the whimsical aim of producing bedlam in the minds of his ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... botanizing," he 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 been ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... other wonders!" The man would insist that 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 many more are needed to establish the resurrection of a Jansenist. Until I find that out, go, ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... "but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God! no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Providence, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... transport, and that this could not have been done by a mob of hysterical ranters. This is fortunately true. To pass from the newspaper offices and political platforms and club fenders and suburban drawing-rooms to the Army and the munition factories was to pass from Bedlam to the busiest and sanest of workaday worlds. It was to rediscover England, and find solid ground for the faith of those who still believed in her. But a necessary condition of this efficiency was that those who were efficient should give all ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... 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
... 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 as a man. But since never to ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... on the bedlam-like street no hearts beat as wildly as those in the breasts of McNerney ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... assembled in conclave at Exeter Hall, have done me the honour to communicate to me the fruits of their profound meditations on the science of legislation. They have, it seems, passed a resolution declaring that the principle, which I had supposed that no man out of Bedlam would ever question, is an untenable principle, and altogether unworthy of a British Parliament. They have been pleased to add, that the present Government cannot, without gross inconsistency, call on Parliament to pass a statute ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... difference of opinion.) From both of those classes of disputants, my dear Jefferson, keep aloof as you would from the infected subjects of yellow fever or pestilence. Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country no ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Fred poured into Oliver's willing ear in loud or soft tones, dependent upon the particular kind of bedlam that was loose in the room at the moment, as they sat side by side on the floor, Oliver's back supported by a pillow which Tomlins had brought from his own bed and tucked behind his shoulders with his ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the "Survey of Cornwall," published in 1769, and he gives an explanation of the custom which is no doubt erroneous, but is curious for other reasons. "It may be," he says, "this device took original from the Master of Bedlam, who (the fable sayeth) used to cure his patients of that impatience by keeping them bound in pools up to the middle, and so more or less after the fit of their fury" (p. 123). The present Master goes further, and keeps them up to the neck ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... of 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 ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... wretched hovel which stood upon the heath, where the fool first entering, suddenly ran back terrified, saying that he had seen a spirit. But upon examination this spirit proved to be nothing more than a poor Bedlam beggar who had crept into this deserted hovel for shelter, and with his talk about devils frighted the fool, one of those poor lunatics who are either mad, or feign to be so, the better to extort charity ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... "Bedlam broke loose!" said Tackleton under his breath. "We shall arrive at the strait-waistcoat and mufflers soon. ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... suspended, and as the answer did not come, broke out for all the world like one of Baal's prophets of old: "Now, Planchette, now, Planchette, behave; do your duty. Now, Planchette, write at once," etc.; and I felt as if I were in Bedlam. One thing is certain, that if Planchette's answer had approached in the remotest degree the answer to the question of my thought, I would then and there have broken Planchette in half, and left my friends in the possession of their remaining ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and co-laborers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam. But more closely regarded, it is seen to be no such thing. Your contemporaries, with their mutual throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... advocates of those measures are mere assumptions. We have no experience by which to try the question. The doctrines of free trade are of very recent growth; the data on which its laws are founded are few, and also uncertain. And does any one out of Bedlam imagine, that any Minister of this country would consent to run such tremendous risks—to try such experiments upon an article of such immense importance to its well-being? Let us never lose sight of Lord Melbourne's memorable words:—"Whether ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... embroilment, melee, spill and pelt, rough and tumble; whirlwind &c 349; bear garden, Babel, Saturnalia, donnybrook, Donnybrook Fair, confusion worse confounded, most admired disorder, concordia discors [Lat.]; Bedlam, all hell broke loose; bull in a china shop; all the fat in the fire, diable a' quatre [Fr.], Devil to pay; pretty kettle of fish; pretty piece of work [Fr.], pretty piece of business [Fr.]. [legal terms] disorderly person; disorderly persons offence; misdemeanor. [moral disorder] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... and clangour of the Loop had long been familiar to him. But now he seemed to find the downtown trip arduous, even hazardous. The roar of the elevated trains, the hoarse hoots of the motor horns, the clang of the street cars, the bedlam that is Chicago's downtown district bewildered him, frightened him almost. He would skip across the street like a harried hare, just missing a motor truck's nose and all unconscious of the stream of invective directed at him by its charioteer. "Heh! Whatcha!... ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... through the solid jungle, the smoke-pillars curled and puffed and talked. Remote villages on the higher peaks, beyond the farthest raids McTavish had ever driven, joined in the troubled conversation. From across the river persisted a bedlam of conches; while from everywhere, drifting for miles along the quiet air, came the deep, booming reverberations of the great war-drums—huge tree trunks, hollowed by fire and carved with tools of stone and shell. ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... crow, the chough, the wren, the fly, the butterfly, the rat, the mouse, the frog, the tadpole, the wall-newt, the water-newt, the worm—I am sure I cannot have completed the list, and some of them are mentioned again and again. Often, of course, and especially in the talk of Edgar as the Bedlam, they have no symbolical meaning; but not seldom, even in his talk, they are expressly referred to for their typical qualities—'hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... our arrival at Fort Platte was the signal for a grand jollification by all hands, with two or three exceptions, who soon got most gloriously drunk, and such an illustration of the beauties of harmony as was then presented would have rivalled Bedlam itself, or even the famous ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... parcelled out among a few, while the mass of men hovered countryless—from this had arisen their lucre—their mental quality was too rich in business shrewdness to tolerate in their own case any such Bedlam: yet they stood helpless before the disaster, and only in the ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... storm and tempest savage the Pyrenees: upon the gentlest day fidgety puffs fret Biarritz, as puppies plague an old hound. But Pau is sanctuary. Once in a long, long while some errant blast blunders into the town. Then, for a second of time, the place is Bedlam. The uncaught shutters are slammed, the unpegged laundry is sent whirling, and, if the time is evening, the naked flames of lamps are blown out. But before a match can be lighted, the air is still again. And nobody cares. It was an accident, and ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... 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 turned ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... replied Mrs. Talbot. "It was fully illustrated in my own case. I had two brothers, who undertook to exercise their love of domineering on me. But they did not find a passive subject—no, not by any means. I was never obedient to their will, for I had one of my own. We made the house often a bedlam for our poor mother; but I never gave way—no, not for an instant, come what might. I had different stuff in me from that of common girls, and in time the boys were glad to ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur
... again, and new bellowings filled the air. Then they rolled over and disappeared with a splash, then bobbed up again. The water foamed and boiled for yards around—the ice-world that had been so still before seemed in a moment to have been transformed into a raging bedlam. Any moment we might expect to have a walrus tusk or two through the boat, or to be heaved up and capsized. Something of this kind was the very least that could happen after such a terrible commotion. But the hurly-burly went on and nothing came of it. I again picked ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... cheers. Had Tammany, the next delegation called, 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 Tammany's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... occasioned them; and though I will not take his own excuse, that he is in passion, I will make a better for him, for I conclude him cracked; and if he should return to England, am charitable enough to wish his only prison might be Bedlam. This apology is truer than that he makes for me; for writing a play, as I conceive, is not entering into the Observator's province; neither is it the Observator's manner to confound truth with falsehood, to put out the eyes of people, and leave them without understanding. ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... explain why he is going, and why he is going to-night," she called out. "Really, this table is getting to be more and more like Bedlam every day, with everybody talking at once. Sometimes—I hope God will forgive me—but positively, sometimes I wish Victor would lose ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... of selling?" said Carew, sharply. "Don't flatter your chances so, Master Alleyn. I wouldn't sell the boy for a world full of Jem Bristows. Why, his mouth is a mint where common words are coined into gold! Sell him? I think I see myself in Bedlam for a fool! Nay, Master Alleyn, what I am coming at is this: I'll place him at the Rose, to do his turn in the play with the rest of us, or out of it alone, as ye choose, for one fourth of the whole receipts over and above my old share in the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... fairway was wide and safe. Her gun-ports were open and every man was alertly at his station. It was a silent ship excepting when an officer passed an order along. Joe Hawkridge began to feel more sanguine of winning against odds. He had never seen such iron discipline as this in the bedlam aboard the Revenge. Stede Bonnet knew how to slacken the reins and when to apply the curb. His men were loyal because he dealt out justice as well ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... likewise affected the dogs in their relations with one another. They quarrelled and bickered more than ever among themselves, till at times the camp was a howling bedlam. Dave and Sol-leks alone were unaltered, though they were made irritable by the unending squabbling. Francois swore strange barbarous oaths, and stamped the snow in futile rage, and tore his hair. His lash was always singing among ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. 'How does the world go? I'll tell you what,' he added, in a lower tone, 'I shouldn't wish it to be mentioned, but it's a—' here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ear—'it's a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!' said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... every difficulty, our 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 must ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... place I went alone, leaving the crowd behind me with directions not to move till I was in my place, which instruction they most strictly followed. After half an hour's walk I arrived at the place I have named. I had hardly time to regain my breath when I heard a row below me as if Bedlam had been let loose. I loaded my gun with buckshot in one barrel and ball in the other, and remained as quiet as a mouse. As the noise of the beaters and dogs approached me, I heard a crash in the bushes within about forty ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... running over with the rag-tag and bob-tail of all Europe! If you think I'll butt into that Bedlam, my dear child, you're badly mistaken. I'd rather live with the freaks in ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... the black lion as he approached them along the trail. When he had rejoined them Tarzan fastened the fingers of one hand in the black mane and started on once more toward the forest. Behind them, from the city, rose a bedlam of horrid sounds, the roaring of lions mingling with the raucous voices of the screaming parrots and the mad shrieks of the maniacs. As they entered the Stygian darkness of the forest the girl once again involuntarily shrank closer to the ape-man, and this time Tarzan ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
