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Bedlam   /bˈɛdləm/   Listen
Bedlam

noun
1.
A state of extreme confusion and disorder.  Synonyms: chaos, pandemonium, topsy-turvydom, topsy-turvyness.
2.
Pejorative terms for an insane asylum.  Synonyms: booby hatch, crazy house, cuckoo's nest, funny farm, funny house, loony bin, madhouse, nut house, nuthouse, sanatorium, snake pit.






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"Bedlam" Quotes from Famous Books



... these places was the British Hotel. Some such whispers were afloat on the evening of Sunday the 17th of June, and excited me strangely. Any stranger not in my secret would have considered that my conduct fully justified my partner, Mr. Day, in sending me home, as better fitted for a cell in Bedlam than the charge of an hotel in the Crimea. I never remember feeling more excited or more restless than upon that day, and no sooner had night fairly closed in upon us than, instead of making preparations for bed, this same stranger would have seen me wrap up—the nights were still cold—and start ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole

... work in a dozen volumes, and finds that only half a dozen pages are worth reading, he does well to cut out the half dozen pages and fling the rest into the fire. Finally, it would be no unbecoming device for every great library to have inscribed over its portal, The Bedlam of the Human Mind. At this point one might perhaps suggest to D'Alembert that study of the pathology of the mind is no bad means of surprising the secrets of humanity and life. For his hour, however, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... a minute I nudged the man next me. "Have you all given cards?" shouted out the man. "Yes," shouted the three women at once. Then we all burst out laughing, and the men went downstairs, leaving the women all talking at once like Bedlam broke loose. ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous

... distant and near, rollicked from building to building, touching elbows with men less picturesquely garbed; the strains of crude music smote the flat, dead desert air; yells, shouts, laughter filtered through the bedlam; an engine, attached to a train of cars on the main track near the private car, wheezed steam in preparation for its eastward trip, soon ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Imogine's lord, and his frantick thirst of revenge; and so the raving character raves, and the scolding character scolds—and what else? Does not the Prior act? Does he not send for a posse of constables or thief-takers to handcuff the villain, or take him either to Bedlam or Newgate? Nothing of the kind; the author preserves the unity of character, and the scolding Prior from first to last does nothing but scold, with the exception indeed of the last scene of the last act, in which, with a most surprising revolution, ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... 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 horrible things—huge, ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... conclusion about the man and his struggles: "Missed the consummate flower and divine ultimate elixir of Philosophy, say you? By Heaven, in clutching at it, and almost getting it, he has tumbled into Bedlam,—which is a terrible miss, if it were never so near! A miss fully as good as a mile, I should say!" —In fact, I generally dissented a little about the end of all these Essays; which was notable, and not without instructive interest to me, as I had so lustily ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II. • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... 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

... 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 into the pit of his stomach and doubled him over, ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... 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 ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... a bedlam; trunks and chests were locked and tied round with ropes; and a general washing and rinsing of faces and hands was beheld. While this was going on, forth came an order from the quarter-deck, for every bed, blanket, bolster, and bundle ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... into many small class sections, each in charge of a lady assistant. The organ pealed out the notes for the opening song which was given fairly well; but when I attempted to read the Master's beginning of the responsive ritual, a stalwart young giant hurled a book at my head, and bedlam broke loose. I jumped from the platform, seized the ringleader by the hair and collar, and with a strength hitherto undreamed of by me, dragged him before he could collect his thoughts to a closet door, hurled him headlong and turned the key. The boys said afterwards that fire ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman

... citizens?) wouldn't simply appropriate them for themselves. Paul Meillard was worried about that; everybody else was willing to let matters take their course. Before they were off the ground in their vehicles, a violent dispute had begun, with a bedlam of jabbering and shrieking. By the time they were landing at the camp, the big laminated leather ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper

... for a quarter of an hour. He was very entertaining. He gave us an account of a visit which he paid long ago to the Court of Denmark; and of King Christian, the madman, who was at last deprived of all real share in the government on account of his infirmity. "Such a Tom of Bedlam I never saw," said Lord Holland. "One day the Neapolitan Ambassador came to the levee, and made a profound bow to his Majesty. His Majesty bowed still lower. The Neapolitan bowed down his head almost to the ground; when, behold! the King clapped his hands on his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... tho', when he 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 ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... of the barber 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 wild," was the result. Such ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various

... and are beginning to grow drunk, from that time until they are past their senses, in such a continued horrible noise of cursing, blasphemy, lewdness, scurrility, and brutish behaviour, such roaring and confusion, such a clatter of mugs and pots at each other's heads, that Bedlam in comparison is a sober and orderly place. At last they all tumble from their stools and benches, and sleep away the rest of the night, and generally the landlord or his wife, or some other whore, who has a stronger head than the rest, picks their pockets before they ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... was as if God's World had fallen into the muck mire of the abyss underlying the bottom of hell; as if Jehovah's Commandments had been presented on carved stone to the monkeys of the monkey cage at the Zoo; as if the Sermon on the Mount had been preached in a roaring bedlam of lunatics. ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... district. The noise and rush 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!... Look!"—Sometimes ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... pleased God to leave in a full 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 ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... me, as it seems to have amused everybody. I was standing close to him at the Council, and he put down his head and whispered, 'Which are you for, Cadland or the mare?' (meaning the match between Cadland and Bess of Bedlam); so I put my head down too and said, 'The horse;' and then as we retired he said to the Duke, 'A ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... the Gordon riots three splendid fellows who should order, lead, control, and be obeyed as natural guides of the crowd in that delirious time, and who should turn out, when all was over, to have broken out from Bedlam; but, though he saw the unsoundness of this, he could not so readily see, in Gordon's case, the danger of taxing ingenuity to ascribe a reasonable motive to acts of sheer insanity. The feeblest parts of the book are those in which Lord ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the sky had opened its flood-gates) "are perfectly explicable by the ordinary laws of nature. Your talk of a nebula is so ridiculous that it deserves no reply. If any lunatic accepts your absurd invitation, and goes into your 'ark,' he will find himself in Bedlam, where he ought ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss

... because my loving nephew and his charming wife can't wait to see me buried in the family cemetery; they want to bury me alive in that private Bedlam of yours," Colonel ...
— Dearest • Henry Beam Piper

... scenes of business or pleasure; in the court 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 light of a buffoon? But why should I mention those places of hurry ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding

... 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

... her and always wore. When winter 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... Phobar switched off the bedlam and, walking like a man asleep, strode out, he did not care where, if ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... revival meetings. In one sense it is the Salvation Army of Buddhism, being especially powerful in what strikes the eye and ear. The Nichirenites have been well called the Ranters of Buddhism. Their revival meetings make Bedlam seem silent, and reduce to gentle murmurs the camp-meeting excesses with which we are familiar in our own country. They are the most sectarian of all sects. Their vocabulary of Billingsgate and the ribaldry employed by them even against their Buddhist brethren, cast into the shade those ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... that walketh bare-armed or bare-legged, and fayneth hymselfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a stycke with baken on it, or suche lyke toy, and nameth poore Tom.' Shakespeare alludes to them under the name of Bedlam Beggars.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... are a team, and it takes a strong hand to drive you, but I rather like it. Josie ought to have been my child, and Rob yours, Meg. Then your house would have been all peace and mine all Bedlam. Now I must go and tell Laurie the news. Come with me, Meg, a little stroll will do us good'; and sticking Ted's straw hat on her head, Mrs Jo walked off with her sister, leaving Daisy to attend to the muffins, Ted to appease Josie, and Tom and Nan to give their respective patients ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... entered your room your train has ceased to be. The simple miracle would be impossible in America, where our trains, when not shrieking at the tops of their whistles, are backing and filling with a wild clangor of their bells, and making a bedlam of their stations; but ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... 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 ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne

... little as the other. I felt then 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 ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton

... not get our horses," Stephens enquired in a low hurried tone, for the noise of the pursuit from the camp was close, and tumultuous as a broken bedlam. ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins

... Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, and sprigs ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... with monotonous insistence if I thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all corners; and finally, the screaming bedlam ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... 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 orator resumed ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... is Baddesley-Clinton-hall, the seat of Edward Ferrers, Esq. and about one mile beyond is a small inn, known by the name of Tom o'Bedlam, near to which is a venerable oak tree, supposed to be two hundred years old, measuring in girth twenty yards, from which one branch extends across a road thirty feet wide. You next come to Wroxhall ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye

... Huff! If you mean to believe This dowser's stuff, and join him in his bedlam, By God, you'll have to reckon with ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)

... to the bedlam of comment that followed. His knife ready, he took a few steps to the door and pushed out—right into the tentacles of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... me a 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

... well turn 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 like ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... followed by a loud knocking at the front door, which din reverberated through the hall, echoing and re-echoing the vigorous summons. Mauville at this leaned from the window and as he did so, there arose a hooting from the sward as though bedlam had broken loose. Maintaining his ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... getting ready; the labour-pains are evidently on him; he 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, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... is desirable 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 agree with you at all," are too flat and positive ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin

... a wagon in which stood a broad-shouldered man, mounted on a chair. He wore a cow-boy hat. A flaming torch set up beside the wagon lighted a cage in one end of it, in which crouched a wild-cat bewildered by the light and the bedlam of noisy, pushing human beings. The children could not see the animal at first, but pushed nearer the wagon to hear what the man was saying. He held up a bottle and shook it over the heads of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Irishman. Oliver Cromwell's porter, yclept Daniel, was a giant. This fellow, through poring over mystical divinity, lost his wits: he preached, prophesied, and raved until finally he was incarcerated in Bedlam, where, after a while, his liberty was allowed him. A famous item amongst his books was a large Bible presented by Neil Gwynne. D'Urfey in his Prologue to Sir Barnaby Whigg (1681), has: 'Like Oliver's porter, but not so ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... with the domestic animals, like the horses and the trick-dogs, that the trainer can exercise gentle persuasion. So in this great arena, this bedlam of wild beasts, were often heard the blows of club and lash, and the sharp report of pistols fired in the faces of unruly ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... to you," said Doggie; and when the door was shut he went and threw himself, shaken, on the couch, hating Oliver and all his works more than ever. Go about barefoot and swab decks! It was Bedlam madness. Besides being dangerous to health, it would be excruciating discomfort. And to be insulted for not grasping at such martyrdom. It ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... fear 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

... a terrible racket on the floor overhead. As the lady asked the question a perfect bedlam ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon

... 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 ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett

... say ye 'twas in vain? Why, I looked to see the pardon sticking out of your waistcoat pocket! Why went ye again to Boston? Know ye not that this whole land is now a bedlam, and the Governors and the magistrates swell the ravings? Seek ye in bedlam for justice of madmen? It is not now pardon or justice that we have to think on, but death, and the best that can be made out on't. Know ye that my trial will be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... my face, and tell me, "he should be always ready to encourage me." In a word, he is a very insignificant fellow, but exceeding gracious. The best return I can make him for his favors is to carry him myself to Bedlam and see him well taken ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... forwarded the Champion of April 14, "outdid" the journalist in virtuous fury: "Let me say only one word of Lord B. The man is insane. The verses on his private affairs excite in me less indignation than pity. The latter copy is the Billingsgate of Bedlam. ... You yourself seem to labour under some delusion as to the merits of Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the Fare Well, with far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... 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

... impertinent and impudent with great applause. Even that model of affection, Clarissa, is so faulty in her behaviour as to deserve little compassion. Any girl that runs away with a young fellow, without intending to marry him, should be carried to Bridewell or to Bedlam the next day. Yet the circumstances are so laid as to inspire tenderness, notwithstanding the low style and absurd incidents; and I look upon this and Pamela to be two books that will do more general mischief than ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... these, we say, were red-coloured infants; of the same pulp and stuff, few years ago; now irretrievably shaped and kneaded as we see! Formulas? There is no mortal extant, out of the depths of Bedlam, but lives all skinned, thatched, covered over with Formulas; and is, as it were, held in from delirium and the Inane by his Formulas! They are withal the most beneficent, indispensable of human equipments: blessed he who has a skin and tissues, so it be ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... with the world, which he ever gave vent to either in prose or verse. He describes himself as the "sport, the miserable victim of rebellious pride, hypochondriac imagination, agonizing sensibility, and Bedlam passions. I wish I were dead, but I'm no like to (p. 082) die.... I fear I am something like undone; but I hope for the best. Come, stubborn Pride and unshrinking Resolution; accompany me through this to me miserable world! I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... order to secure the finest 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 ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... came to the thinned out strip of timber that surrounded the clearing and the flare of the flames was in his eyes. The bedlam of sound that came to him now was like fire in his brain. He heard the song and the laughter of men, the shrill cries of women and children, the barking and snarling and fighting of a hundred dogs. He wanted to rush out and join them, to become again a part of what he had once been. Yard by yard ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... horror, 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 ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... 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 ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... 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

... view) for a monument to Fergusson were the churchyard of Haddington. But as that would perhaps not carry many votes, I should say one of the two following sites:—First, either as near the site of the old Bedlam as we could get, or, second, beside the Cross, the heart of his city. Upon this I would have a fluttering butterfly, and, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Bedlam of a place Bartholomew must have been, with its noise, its gew-gaws, bad beer, cheap shows, and riotous visitors. Ned Ward, to whose descriptions modern readers are indebted, partly through the aid ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins

... thousand 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 ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon

... the Virgin Islands now and at dawn we neared St. Kitts, of the Leeward group, anchoring a half-mile away from the landing and putting passengers ashore in the small boats that ranged themselves near the steamer. There was a very bedlam of chatter, argument, and recrimination among the black boatmen, mounting at times to furious invective in a patois we failed wholly to understand, for though the majority of the natives speak English on all the islands, whether Dutch, French, or British, they use a language ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen millions a year each in our traps, take it altogether; and I don't see how we're to do with less." A highly comic state of life for two private gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly comic. Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one madman in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... Bedlam broke out suddenly. Shanlee, who had been standing passively, his right arm loosely grasped by Tom Brangwyn, came down on Brangwyn's instep with the heel of his left foot and hit Brangwyn under the chin ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... staring mad!" exclaimed Lawless; "strait-waistcoats, Bedlam, and all that sort o' thing, you know;—conversing with my bay mare for the last quarter of an hour, and drinking in every syllable that fell from her beautiful lips—oh, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... there, 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 ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... 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 ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... the stays, bellowed in the shrouds, thrummed the taut ropes against the steel masts, and from the myriad tiny ropes far aloft evoked a devil's chorus of shrill pipings and screechings. And yet, through this bedlam of noise, came Captain West's voice, as of a spirit visitant, distinct, unrelated, mellow as all music and mighty as an archangel's call to judgment. And it carried understanding and command to the man at the wheel, and to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... reached the garage unseen. There, he had backed out the car, by hand; shoving it into the open, lest the motor-whirr give premature announcement of his presence. Then, as he boarded the machine and reached for the self-starter, all bedlam broke loose, from somewhere in the general direction of ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... Druids' groves are gone—so much the better: Stonehenge is not—but what the devil is it?—But Bedlam still exists with its sage fetter, That madmen may not bite you on a visit; The Bench too seats or suits full many a debtor; The Mansion House,[575] too (though some people quiz it), To me appears a stiff yet grand erection; But then the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... anger. "Whatever you do is done in such a loud, violent fashion that it becomes perfectly unbearable. You play ball with boys. You climb fences and trees. You are continually flying up and down the street on your detestable roller-skates and shouting until the neighborhood seems like Bedlam, and you don't appear to have the vaguest idea that people's rights need not be infringed on in such a manner; that they have the right to peace and quiet in their own homes. Even if you would content yourself with your own disorderliness! But you are not satisfied ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... 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 good can ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... their case, frankly told him that if he did not moderate his views, and bring his engine within a reasonable speed, he would "inevitably damn the whole thing, and be himself regarded as a maniac fit only for Bedlam." ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... cooey, and the well-known sound, with its ten thousand Australian associations, being at once recognised and responded to, a reunion of the party took place immediately, doubtless to the great wonderment of the surrounding Londoners, who would probably suppose they were all fit for Bedlam." ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... signs on little bits of paper, and almost all were howling like maniacs or wild beasts half starved. The only place I was ever in at all to be compared with it in volume and variety of noise is the parrot-room in the London Zoological Gardens. Bedlam and Pandemonium I have not visited—as yet—and consequently cannot speak from personal experience. But the parrots in that awful house in Regent's Park are capable of making more hideous noises in a given ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... attracted by that curious riot of tobacco-girls, had paused on the sidewalk across the street, among the newspaper stands. A strange fascination it had for him, that moving mass of white handkerchiefs drawn tightly over pretty foreheads! What a bedlam! A regiment of females in mutiny! A nunnery gone mad! A meteor-shower of black eyes, that stared at a man boldly, immodestly, stripping the clothes off one, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the door opened, and in stepped nurse. "Lors-a-me! Bedlam let loose!" she exclaimed, putting up her hands and looking as surprised as if this noisy state of things were not of daily occurrence. "Master Felix, your pa'd like to see you 'bout some referumces,—or ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus

... told you that once in Cornwall, I—the most unlikely person in the world—was caught up by it. I've never laughed at morbidity, or nerves, or insanity since. There's such a jolly thin wall between the sanest, most level-headed beef-eating Squire in the country and the maddest poet in Bedlam. I know—I've been both in the same day. It's better to be both, I believe, if you can keep one under the other, but you ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... subject, and from which hardly any 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 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... egregious imprudence of which they had been guilty. One person alone said, that he did not believe them guilty of high treason; but that they were stark mad, and therefore desired they might be sent to bedlam.[v] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... loose. The convention was bedlam. The friends of the Judge were confounded. They did not know ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... red haze through which he saw dimly. He was aware of the hailstorm of boulders that were thick in the air. He saw vaguely the white faces and copper-clad bodies of strange men leaping about him, and he heard the wild bedlam of their shrieks as they joined in the mad battle against ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... What shall I gain by that? Let me tell you, it is these minor troubles that send a man to Bedlam. One breeds another, till they swarm and buzz you distracted, and sting you dead. 'Petit maiheur!' it is a greater one than you have ever encountered since you have ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... Kezia, shortly. "At my time of life a woman has a little sense left; or if she have not, she is only fit for Bedlam. I do not think Sophy will be mistress, Fanny. Somebody else is going to take that place. Otherwise, I should have stayed ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... touching—are insulted by the language and demeanour of the hardened miscreants who are the refuse of Port Arthur and Cockatoo Island. The vilest crimes are perpetrated as jests. These are creatures who openly defy authority, whose language and conduct is such as was never before seen or heard out of Bedlam. There are men who are known to have murdered their companions, and who boast of it. With these the English farm labourer, the riotous and ignorant mechanic, the victim of perjury or mistake, are indiscriminately herded. With them are mixed Chinamen from Hong ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... stood until presently they saw the majestic proportions of 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 the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... followed by the shout, "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 Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... 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, ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... 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 awoke next morning perfectly composed and well. The younger priest behaved with great ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... fortress that has not one weak gate? where 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 Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of it. Directly we were through they came surging against the bars, silent, like a mob of ugly spectres. But suddenly, up the street somewhere, perhaps near that public-house, a row started as if Bedlam had broken loose: shouts, yells, an awful shrill shriek—and at that noise all these heads vanished from ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... ghastly, ghaist-alluring edifices, Hanging with threat'ning jut, like precipices; O'er-arching, mouldy, gloom-inspiring coves, Supporting roofs, fantastic, stony groves; Windows and doors in nameless sculptures drest With order, symmetry, or taste unblest; Forms like some bedlam Statuary's dream, The craz'd creations of misguided whim; Forms might be worshipp'd on the bended knee, And still the second dread command be free; Their likeness is not found on earth, in air, or sea! Mansions that would disgrace the building taste Of any mason reptile, bird or beast: ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... it would come, sir, and bear her off on't!" was his hearty response. "She's more a fool nor ever over it, a-whining and a-pining all day long, 'cause she ain't at New Jerusalem. She wants to be in Bedlam, sir; that's what she do! it 'ud do her more ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... 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

... duties at the bank as its future president. At noon he tore himself away, plunging again into the streets, there even more fully to face himself and his coming humiliation. The hot, busy thoroughfares, steaming under the water sprayed upon them by trundling sprinkling- carts, were a veritable bedlam—canons of baked pavements and heartless walls of brick and mortar, plate glass and glaring gilt signs. Cries of newsboys—and cheerful, happy cries they were—fell on his ears in sounds so incongruous to his mood that they ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben

... distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael prick up his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh disaster. It was a confused yelping, howling, and barking ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London

... howling mobs, every constable was on duty. The hall was stormed and when Lloyd George appeared on the platform he faced turmoil. Hundreds of men carried sticks, clubs and bricks covered with rags and fastened to barbed wire. When he rose to speak Bedlam let loose. Jeers, catcalls and frightful epithets rained on him and with them rocks and vegetables. He removed his overcoat and stood calm and smiling. When he raised his voice, however, the grand assault was made. Only a double cordon of constables massed around the stage ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... Teufelsdroeckh, Professor der Allerlei Wissenschaft—of things in general—in the University of Weissnichtwo. "Society," said Carlyle, "is founded upon cloth," following the suggestions of Lear's speech to the naked bedlam beggar: "Thou art the thing itself: unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art;" and borrowing also, perhaps, an ironical hint from a paragraph in Swift's Tale of a Tub: "A sect was established who held the universe to be a large suit of ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Westminster School and Camb. After leaving the Univ. he went to London, and joined the stage both as actor and author. He was taken up by Rochester and others of the same dissolute set, led a loose life, and drank himself into Bedlam, where he spent four years. After his recovery he lived mainly upon charity, and met his death from a fall under the effects of a carouse. His tragedies, which, with much bombast and frequent untrained flights of imagination, have occasional ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... inconsistent ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves without laughing. These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for Bedlam; not considering that humour should always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most boundless freedoms. There is a kind of nature that is to be observed in this sort of compositions, ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie [pinched?] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... 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, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various

... bedlam. The Stetsons were yelling with triumph. The Lewallens were divided, and Rufe placed three Stetsons with Winchesters on each side of the courthouse, and kept them firing. Rome, pale and stern, hid his force between the square ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.

... sixteen year' went by, an' we two were sittin', one quakin' night, beside this very fire, hearkenin' to the bedlam outside: for 'twas the big storm in 'Seventy, an' even indoors we must shout to make ourselves heard. About ten, as we was thinkin' to alley-couchey, there comes a bangin' on the door, an' Isaac gets up an' lets the bar down, ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Once a bedlam of shrieking voices roused him. He tried to open his eyes, whose lids were too heavy for his strength. And by that he knew he was dreaming. Yet from under those lowered lids he seemed to see a wild medley of red warriors, their faces blotched and ghastly in the green light of their weapons. ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin

... hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the World-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... it, and at last did find the whole thing a forgery; yet he maintained it again and again, upon oath, that it had been signed and sealed by my cozen Mary ever since before her marriage. So I told him to his teeth he did like a knave, and so he did, and went with him to the Scrivener at Bedlam, and there found how it came to pass, viz., that he had lost, or pretends to have lost, the true original, and that so he was forced to take this course; but a knave, at least a man that values not what he swears to, I perceive he is. But however I am now better able to see ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... that vessel was I cannot describe, but she was commanded by a lunatic, and might be called a floating Bedlam. Drinking, roaring, singing, quarrelling, dancing, they were never all sober at one time; and there were days together when, if a squall had supervened, it must have sent us to the bottom; or if a King's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson

... howling Bedlam of voices, it is of no use to talk or write— no man, if he has anything to say, can be heard. He is reviewed to- day and forgotten to-morrow. To soothe the pangs of a single sufferer, to drain a poor man's cottage and give him wholesome drinking ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... seemed a stream of color and life. 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 ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... mother said nothing, but, before she left, she took one long look about the engine room. In some such bedlam of noise and heat he spent his life. She was wrong, of course, to pity him; one need not measure labour by its conditions or by its cost, but by the joy of achievement. The woman saw the engines—sinister, menacing, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 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 side, was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... had lost your intellect, I am a voluntary contributor, and could have got you chains and a keeper in Bedlam. If you had broken a limb, I am a life-governor, and it would have been a pleasure to me to send you to the hospital. But you may as well ask me to put life into a dead man, as to be of service to a creature who has lost his security. You had better die at once. It would be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... thinks them tame! Lord! If I found myself hatching conspiracies in Sofia on a nest made of loaded revolvers, I should feel that the wild whirl of Bedlam had broken ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... 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 ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... that happened at the bedlam at Paris. 2 gentlemen out of curiosity coming to sie the madmen, the Keeper of the Hospital be reason of some businesse he had could not go alongs wt them, whence he ordains one of the fools that was besyde to go alongs wt them, and show them al the madmen ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... apologise, through the medium of your paper, for the inconvenience these two people have caused, and to assure your correspondents that steps shall be taken to prevent a repetition of the annoyance. The fact is, that both of them are so rarely out of Bedlam at the same time that I had not realised the necessity for keeping them apart, nor the danger of their amalgamation, but they shall be kept in separate coaches in future, and I can only express my sincere regret for the mischief and trouble ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... Then he raved round the room like a derelict ship, Red Wull following uneasily behind. He cursed; he blasphemed; he screamed and beat the walls with feverish hands. A stranger, passing, might well have thought this was a private Bedlam. At last, exhausted, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... the Prophet just then as if Miss Minerva were going to wreck his life and prepare him accurately for a future in Bedlam. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... ill-natured should I think Democritus, who laughed at all the world, but that he retired himself so much out of it that we may perceive he took no great pleasure in that kind of mirth. I have been drawn twice or thrice by company to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much delighted with the fantastical extravagancy of so many various madnesses, which upon me wrought so contrary an effect, that I always returned not only melancholy, but even sick ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... Borgo, 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 the grating, through which many thousand ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... describes as "wavering in the most astonishing manner between being Something and Nothing." To me he is chiefly remarkable as being still—with his entirely enormous vanity and very small stock of faculty—out of Bedlam. He picked up a notion or two from Coleridge many years ago; and has ever since been rattling them in his head, like peas in an empty bladder, and calling on the world to "List the Music of the ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... in his rod and tackle, and declared that it was no use trying to catch fish while Bedlam ran riot. ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... shut, shut 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 madden round ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... this the candid American thinks it fair to contrast with the scale of the Mississippi. Now, it is hardly worth while to answer a pure fiction gravely; else one might say that no Englishman out of Bedlam ever thought of looking in an island for the rivers of a continent, nor, consequently, could have thought of looking for the peculiar grandeur of the Thames in the length of its course, or in the extent of soil which it drains. Yet, if he had been so absurd, the American might have recollected ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... 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 ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... and 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 ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... can swear a bit now and then; but you ought to have heard Captain Goss! He used even to frighten the old salts, that had common oaths in their mouths from morning till night. He was worse than the worst madman in Bedlam when his blood was up; and even the strong, bold men of the crew used to cower before him like as the cabin-boy. And yet, mates, he was but a little, maimed man, and more than sixty years old. He had a regular monkey-face; I never saw one like it—brown, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various



Words linked to "Bedlam" :   asylum, insane asylum, mental institution, cuckoo's nest, balagan, mental hospital, institution, psychiatric hospital, confusion, mental home



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