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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



... seen, was already converted. In a letter written at this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with great humility "as a convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely to be a stumblingblock to others, than to advance their faith," though he adds, with reason enough, "that he who can ascribe an amendment of life and manners, and a reformation of the heart itself, to madness is guilty of an absurdity, that in any other ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... agreeable things supplied by constitutional government. The French have to be judged by their peers! Of what use is it to pay for judges if we, land-owners, are obliged to do their work. The old parliaments, against which so much has been said, were a thousand times better than all this bedlam let loose ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... One in particular I noticed and made a sketch of peeling and eating an apple, and he strolled up afterwards and demanded to have his name inserted. More delay; then "the gentleman from Somewhere-else" informs the Speaker that there is not a quorum. "The gentleman from Bedlam" demands a division taken by tellers, and the Speaker agrees, and is just appointing the tellers, when "the gentleman from Obstructianna" calls for "Yeas and Nays," which means, gentle reader, that the whole of the House of Representatives have to be ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... old lady, who was struggling into her equipage. He swept his armful of bundles into the coach, seized his scandalized companion under the arms, and deposited her bodily upon a seat. Without waiting to hear from her, he dashed away through the bedlam. Under horses' heads he went, past flying hoofs and scraping wheels, jostling pedestrians, and little, brown policemen, until he had reached the outskirts of the crowd, where he vaulted into a vacant vehicle and called upon ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... to an exceptionally clean-cut young fellow of about his own age. This youth appeared a fine specimen of the sane, wholesome, successful young American business man. Yet he was behaving like a madman, yelling like Bedlam, wildly flaunting his hat—a splendid-looking Panama—now and then savagely brandishing his fists at an unseen foe. Queed heard him saying fiercely, apparently to the world at large: "They couldn't lick us now. By the Lord, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... streamed out from the four guns and, accompanying it, a perfect bedlam of shrieks and cries. The sheep were now upon them, and the hail of bullets dropped some in their headlong career, piling them up against the horses and adding to the barricade. But it could not stop all, and a stream of the animals made its way over the bodies ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... Can Bedlam, in concert with Lucifer, form a more mad and devilish request? Were it possible a people could sink into such apostacy they would deserve to be swept from the earth like the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah. The proposition is an universal ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... 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 the table, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... more temperate, I'le have it prov'd if you were never yet in Bedlam, Never in love, for that's a lunacy, No great state left ye that you never lookt for, Nor cannot manage, that's a rank distemper; That you were christen'd, and who answer'd for ye, ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... mile away you may see dust flying; 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 Pau knows it. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... 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

... and cruelty we have a striking monument in a single English word—a word originally significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant of wild riot, brutality, and confusion—Bethlehem Hospital became "Bedlam." ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... "to stripe him like a child" before the whole household, "for amendment of himself and example of such others." The other case was that of a man who, "after that he had fallen into that frantic heresy, fell soon after into plain open frenzy besides." The man was confined in Bedlam, and when discharged went about disturbing public service in churches, and committing acts of great indecency. Devout, religious folk besought the Chancellor to restrain him, and accordingly, one day when he came wandering by Mores door, he caused him to be taken by the constables, bound ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... to commend me to 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 ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... '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 'dauphin'; 'iota' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... 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 ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock

... every minute!" exclaimed Tutt. "Surely in all this bedlam we ought to be able to acquit our new client Mr. Higgleby of the charge of bigamy. At least you ought to ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... a bed in a paltry apartment, where I was attended by an old woman, who asked a thousand impertinent questions relating to my condition, and informed me that my behaviour had thrown the whole family into confusion; that Lothario affirmed I was mad, and proposed to have me sent to Bedlam; but my lady persuaded herself there was more in my conduct than he cared should be known, and had taken to her bed on bare suspicion, having first ordered that I should be narrowly looked to. I heard all she said without making any other reply than desiring she would ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... sad shadow Lucrece spends her eyes, And shapes her sorrow to the bedlam's woes, Who nothing wants to answer her but cries, And bitter words to ban her cruel foes: The painter was no god to lend her those; And therefore Lucrece swears he did her wrong, To give her so much grief and ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]

... 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, ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... If that rogue of a lackey quoted Shakspeare as much in the servants' hall as he did while I was binding him neck and heels in the kitchen, that's enough for all the household to declare he was moon-stricken; and if we find it necessary to do anything more, why, we must induce him to go into Bedlam for a month or two. The disappearance of the waiting-woman is natural; either I or Lady Ellinor send her about her business for her folly in being so gulled by the lunatic. If that's unjust, why, injustice to servants is common enough, public and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of a small bedlam, and I shut my lips tightly and inwardly cursed my interest in all rustics, and particularly the Camps. I was fairly trapped. I saw my position, and held my peace, while the two rascals told their tale, ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... as 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

... was due when I went into the corridor. Lines are forbidden in that school. At the stroke of the bell, the classroom doors burst open and bedlam was let loose. I had anticipated what was coming, and hurriedly betook myself to an alcove. I saw more spontaneity in two minutes than I had ever seen before in my life. Some boys tore through the corridors at breakneck speed and down the stairways, three steps at a time. Others sauntered ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... family, but his own, give him up. At present, matters are patching up by the mediation of my brother, but I think can never go on: she married him extremely against her will, and he is at least an out-pensioner of Bedlam: his mother's family have many ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... the hypothesis Lockhart "at heart had a dislike to Scott, had done his best in an underhand, treacherous manner to dis-hero him," he expressed, as he well might, unbounded contempt. It seems incredible now that such a theory should ever, in or out of Bedlam, have been held. Perhaps it will be equally incredible some day that a similar view should have been taken of the relations between Froude ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... 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

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

... qualified to govern. Russia soon awoke to the consciousness that the destinies of thirty millions of people were in the hands of a maniac, whose conduct seemed to prove that his only proper place was in one of the wards of Bedlam. The grossest contradictions followed each other in constant succession. Today he would caress his wife, to-morrow place her under military arrest. At one hour he would load his children with favors, and the next endeavor to expose them publicly ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 instead of vermilion, it is ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... personal violence, as the two men rise before the fancy,—the big, swarthy black-haired son of the northern hills, with his robust common sense, and the sallow, lean, sickly Virginia planter, not many degrees removed mentally from the patients in Bedlam. ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... then opened the door to spier what news. Oh, but my heart was like to break with anxiety! I paced up and down, and to and fro, with my Kilmarnock on my head, and my hands in my breeches pockets, like a man out of Bedlam. I thought it would never be over; but, at the second hour of the morning, I heard a wee squeel, and knew that I was a father; and so proud was I, that notwithstanding our loss, Lucky Bringthereout and me whanged away at the cheese and bread, and drank so briskly at the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... a screaming, tossing bedlam, the ring a welter. He heard English barking at him. Cover up! He was covered up. Blam! He dropped and rolled away and came again erect. And blam! He was covered up, as much as any man could cover. And then a glove sank into the pit of his stomach and doubled him over, sickened him, racked ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans

... 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 ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... it please you?" said the man, surprised at the demand; and then looking upon the mean equipage of her who used towards him such a tone of authority, he added, with insolence, "Why, what Bess of Bedlam is this would ask to see my lord on such a day as ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... from hence 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 abbey, the residence of Christopher Wren, Esq. a descendant ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye

... that is to say, he borrowed nothing from the recollections or the forms of the antique. The subjects that he treated were relatively modern, taken from the history of the Middle Ages, from Dante, Shakspere, Goethe, Lord Byron, or Walter Scott." He painted "Hamlet," "The Boat of Dante," "Tasso in Bedlam," "Marino Faliero," "The Death of Sardanapalus," "The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha," "The Massacre of the Bishop of Liege," and similar subjects. Goethe in his conversations with Eckerman expressed great admiration of Delacroix's interpretations of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... 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 corner of a corral and came full on it. Several ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... hall burst asunder, the books tumbled madly from their shelves. In vain did Muenchhausen step out of his frame to call them to order; it only crashed and raged all the more wildly. I sought refuge from this Bedlam broken loose in the Hall of History, near that gracious spot where the holy images of the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de Medici stand near each other, and I knelt at the feet of the Goddess of Beauty. In her glance I forgot all the wild ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Then he led them to a shaft up which a hoist ran. It was very noisy here. A rivet gun banged away overhead, and the plates of the Platform rang with the sound, and the echoes screeched, and to Joe the bedlam was infinitely good to hear. The man with the arm band shouted into a telephone transmitter, and a hoist cage came down. Joe and Sally stepped on it. Joe took a firm grip on her shoulder, ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster

... 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 ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin

... authorising me to break the matter to Lady Macadam. I was spared this performance, for the servants jealoused what had been done, and told her ladyship. When I entered the room she was like a mad woman in Bedlam. She sent her coachman on horseback to overtake them, which he did at Kilmarnock, and they returned in the morning, when her ladyship was as cagey and meikle taken up with them as if they had gotten her full consent and privilege from the first. Captain Macadam afterwards bought ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... and shrieks of laughter, and Peters, hurriedly feeling, and finding his own tie far out of place, threw the chalk to the floor and dashed back to his seat amid a perfect bedlam of hilarity. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... convention, a law of society, an arbitrary institute, and therefore a possible mistake. A sage and a maniac each thinks the other mad. The decision is a matter of majorities. Should a whole community become insane, it would nevertheless vote itself wise; if the craze of Bedlam were uniform, its inmates could not distinguish it from a Pantheon; and though all human history seemed to the gods only as a continuous series of mediaeval processions des sots et des anes, yet the topsy-turvy intellect of the world ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... the fire-bells! Bing! Bing! Bing! the alarm! In an instant quiet turns to uproar—an outburst of noise, excitement, clamor—bedlam broke loose; Bing! Bing! Bing! Rattle, clash and clatter. Open fly the doors; brave men mount their boxes. Bing! Bing! Bing! They're off! The horses tear down the street like mad. Bing! Bing! ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

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

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

... guilty bosoms on the bedlam-like street no hearts beat as wildly as those in the breasts ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... still reigned around the station told me that the crowd was impatient to see me. In fact Bedlam appeared to have been let loose. The news of my capture had spread through Wesel like wildfire, and public animosity and hostility towards me had risen to fever-heat. During the night the crowd had swollen considerably, and it clung tenaciously ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney

... classroom a perfect bedlam reigned. Dozens of voices shouted, "Shag's the man for us! Hurrah for Shag!" and dozens replied, "Who will join the anti-Indians? Who will vote for a white man to represent white men? This ain't an Indian school—get out with ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson

... the closed window the noise of the mill penetrated. The yard-engine whistled shrilly. The clatter of motor-trucks, the far away roar of the furnaces, the immediate vicinity of many typewriters, made a very bedlam of sound. Mr. Dunbar drew his chair closer, and laid a card ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... 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." ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... knew his neighbors, 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, which had ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... 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 ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... 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 ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... 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 contrivance of his wife, that she might make manifest to him concerning womankind ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... stratification, and if that was so it upset enough geology to spoil a textbook. It would mean that the professor could read a paper at the next Pan-Geological Conference that would turn the whole assembly into a bedlam. ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... clownishly with this mirage of my thought. Then what is there left? I. This grim figure stumbling with his head down through a storm of denouements. I persist—an unwelcome visitor, a bargain-hunting tourist in Bedlam. I remain. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... memories in the Region of 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 ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... opened her mouth and emitted long, loud shrieks. Miss Watts continued counting handkerchiefs. The howls grew more artificial in quality, but louder in volume. Isabelle grew red in the face. This was hard work. After about three minutes of bedlam ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke

... description. Always, however, there is allusion to the purpose of the meeting on the part of Lerchenau, whose plans are spoiled by apparitions in all parts of the room, the entrance of the police, his presumptive bride and her father, a woman who claims him as her husband, four children who raise bedlam (and memories of the contentious Jews in "Salome"); by shouting "Papa! papa!" until his mind is in a whirl and he rushes out in despair. The princess leaves the new-found ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... mad haste. The wide road split it in the middle and 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 ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey

... rode furiously into the courtyard of the Chateau of St. Louis, dishevelled, bespattered, and some of them hatless. They dismounted, and foaming with rage, rushed through the lobbies, and with heavy trampling of feet, clattering of scabbards, and a bedlam of angry tongues, burst ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... and girls' races, races of young women and old women, of fat men and fat women, sack races and three-legged races, and the contestants strove around the small track through a Bedlam of cheering supporters. The tug-of-war was already forgotten, and good nature ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... 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 of the place. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... Joseph-Marie d'Autriche-Este, whom the tragic death of Prince Rudolphe, almost exactly twenty-four years and six months earlier to a day, had made Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary—and the tone of our gathering was changed. From that day the party threatened to become a little Bedlam, and the ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich

... May 8, we went together and visited the mansions of Bedlam[1114]. I had been informed that he had once been there before with Mr. Wedderburne, (now Lord Loughborough,) Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Foote; and I had heard Foote give a very entertaining account of Johnson's happening to have his attention ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... 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. I found Pending worming ...
— Lighter Than You Think • Nelson Bond

... cap-a-pie, and with them some semblance of order and quiet out of chaos and bedlam. First the sumpter beasts, all loaded now, were driven, with a strong escort, to the downs below the castle and there held to await the column. Then, one by one, the companies were formed and marched out beneath fluttering pennon and ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... then all fell into order, and nothing was heard but the leader's voice and the stir of many bodies moving simultaneously. An uninitiated observer would have thought himself in Bedlam; for as the evening wore on, the laws of society seemed given to the winds, and humanity gone mad. Bags flew in all directions, clubs hurtled through the air, and dumb-bells played a castinet accompaniment to peals of laughter that made better music than any band. Old and young gave themselves ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott

... 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 the house, fifty ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... 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

... has 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

... engaged in the same 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 of the community, but each solely for his ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... In vain, 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 held ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... once accepted, then disappointed, leads to blood-shedding, and onward to madness with lucid alternations. The insanity expresses itself in the ravings of the homicide lover, who even imagines himself among the dead, in a clamour and confusion closely resembling an ill-regulated Bedlam, but which, if the description be a faithful one, would for ever deprive the grave of its title to the epithet of silent. It may be good frenzy, but we doubt its being as good poetry. Of all this there may, we admit, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... the house was a bedlam. Daniel ran up the steps, Eleanore close behind him. The women in the lower apartments came running up, screaming for water. Daniel and Eleanore turned back, and dragged a big pail full of water up ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... weakness had come out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel's; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say. There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what my daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won't speak of. For, though Katerina Ivanovna is full of generous feelings, she is a spirited ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... into fragments, 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 scenes, left the ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... disarrangement, disorganization, jumble, chaos, litter, irregularity, disturbance, tumult, riot, turmoil, Bedlam, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... all the utter nakedness of your inward life this day; were all your secret thoughts, and all your stealthy schemes, and all your mad imaginations, and all your detestable motives, and all your hatreds like hell, and all your follies like Bedlam to be laid naked—I suppose the horror of it would make you cry to the rocks and the mountains to cover you this Sabbath night, or the weeds of the nearest sea to wrap you down into its depths. It would be hell before the time to you if your soul were suddenly to be stripped absolutely ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... bedlam of shrieks and clattering of dishes and knives. I walked firmly upstairs, found my coat and hat, and left the house forever. It was my first and last experience at that occidental version of the Hara-Kiri, ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... who is under sentence of death for having poisoned her sister. She appeared to me to be insane; but it is said that it is a frequent attempt of the prisoners to sham madness, in order to get to Bedlam, from which they can get out when cured. One woman deceived all the medical people, clergyman, jailer, and turnkeys, was removed to Bedlam as incurably mad, and from Bedlam made her escape. I saw a girl of about eighteen, who had been educated at Miss Hesketh's school, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth

... Nightingale, however, belongs to a later date than the Etat des Arts, though he had already achieved the masterly figure of Eloquence on the Argyll monument. The only other sculptor referred to by Rouquet is Gabriel Cibber, whose statues of Madness and Melancholy, long at Bedlam, and now at South Kensington, certainly deserve his praise. But Cibber died in 1700, and belongs to the Caroline epoch. He no doubt owes his place in the Etat des Arts to the fact that he had been abused in the already-mentioned Letters on ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

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

... 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 ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... but occasionally they fail to hide the joke. The laugh becomes ours, and circumstance must submit to the way we see it. If Time playfully imprisons us in a century we would rather have missed, where only the stars are left undisturbed to wink above the doings and noises of Bedlam, and where to miss the last train—supposing it runs at all—is the right end to a perfect day of blizzards and social squalls, what does it matter when we find that the whole of it is shaken by a single idea? Might it not vanish altogether if enough of us could be found to laugh ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... 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 with the heel of his left palm. ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... if she had nothing to send by him, mayhap he might stay in town a day or two; for he had never seen the lions in the Tower, nor Bedlam, nor the tombs; and he would make a holiday or two, as he had leave to do, if she had no business or message that required his posting down ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... meet. The Neutrality (287) begins to break out, and threatens to be an excise or convention. The newspapers are full of it, and the press teems. It has already produced three pieces: "The Groans of Germany," which I will send you by the first opportunity: "Bedlam, a poem on His Maj'esty's happy escape from his German dominions, and all the wisdom of his conduct there." The title of this is all that is remarkable in it. The third piece is a ballad, which, not for the goodness, but for the excessive abuse of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... 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, frightful; the man saw power ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the door, good John! fatigued, I said; Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead. The Dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt, All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out: Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand, They rave, recite, and madden round the land. What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide? They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide; By land, by water, they renew the charge; They stop the chariot, and ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... to do in taking care of his craft; and then he can always look forward to the day he'll get in. But this generalizing, night and day, without any port ahead, and little comfort in looking astarn, will soon fit a man for Bedlam. I just: weathered Cape Crazy, I can tell you, lads; and that, too, in the white water! As for my v'y'ge being desperate, what was there to make it so, I should like ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... this brief confession of a self-deluded solitary soul, which had built its house upon sand, as hopefully as if the foundations were solidest rock. The line of demarcation between such fanaticism as Miss Skipwith's and the hallucination of an old lady in Bedlam, who fancies herself Queen Victoria, seemed to Vixen but a hair's breadth. But, after all, if the old lady and Miss Skipwith were both happy in their harmless self-deceptions, why should one pity them? The creature to be pitied is the man ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... has himself 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 quarrel of the party ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... calculate the importance of 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 of ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his princely head to "inspect" the British volunteers, and hauled the second off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, why so much the better for all of us outside Bedlam!' ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... closet, as it was called, where everything, from the 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

... Madame Duquesne to be as gently undeceived the next morning as possible with respect to her child; but the reaction and disappointment proved too much for her wavering intellect. She relapsed into positive insanity, and was placed in Bedlam, where she remained two years. At the end of that period she was pronounced convalescent. A sufficient sum of money was raised by myself and others, not only to send her to Paris, but to enable ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... It might be so, if this were Italy; there, where the very peasant burns with passion, and breathes his feeblest and meanest thoughts and desires in song. But here, they already call me mad! They look on me as one doomed to Bedlam. They avoid me with sentiments and looks of distrust, if not of fear; and when I am looking into the cloud, striving to pierce, with dilating eye its wild yellow flashing centres, they draw their flaxen-headed infants to their breasts, and mutter their thanks to ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... incessantly, far from the maddening crowd of politics. This detachment has probably bred a suspicion that marks his actions. He has no intimates, no associates who call him "Bill." He is not a social being. He is rarely seen where men and women congregate. He is virtually unknown in that strange bedlam composed largely of social climbers and official poseurs called Washington society. He neither smokes, drinks, nor plays. What relaxation he gets is on the back of a western nag in Rock Creek Park where he may be seen any morning ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... "you 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... 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 ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... think so?' said Cyril slowly. 'Do you think She'll believe us? Could anyone believe about a Sammyadd unless they'd seen it? She'll think we're pretending. Or else she'll think we're raving mad, and then we shall be sent to Bedlam. How would you like it?' - he turned suddenly on the miserable Jane - 'how would you like it, to be shut up in an iron cage with bars and padded walls, and nothing to do but stick straws in your hair all day, and listen to the howlings and ravings ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool, of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was probably not true; we have all to submit to some ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... less philosophical readers, for example, it is now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdroeckh, precipitated through 'a shivered Universe' in this extraordinary way, has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing Satanic Poetry; or blow-out his brains. In the progress towards any of which consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle

... Bethlem or Bedlam Hospital, Founders' Hall, Armourers' Hall, the churches of St. Olave Jewry, St. Margaret, Lothbury, ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales

... and made them break loose from their wagons, a company of men came in sight, and with swagger and bluster, took possession of the polls, and proceeded to do the voting. Meantime whisky flowed like water, and the men, far gone in liquor, turned the place into a bedlam. In utter humiliation and disgust many of the squatters went home. Caleb May did not get into the neighborhood till afternoon. Before he got to the place of voting, he met Joseph Potter, and on hearing what was done he threw his hat on ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... multitude 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 loose ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... 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 ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... 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 ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... For visions won and lost, And count the fancied spoils, If e'er they quit the cost; And if they still possess Thy mind, as worthy things, Pick straws with Bedlam Bess, And call them ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... tossed his battered Derby hat up into the air as he shouted: "Go it, El Sabio! Give it to 'em, my boy! Ten t' one against th' fat priest! Three cheers for th' jackass! Hip-hip-hurrah!" In short, it seemed as though Bedlam had broken loose among us, and as though all of us together were ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... strenue declinates, si quid vero irrepsi vitii, id avide arripientes. But I might have spared this quotation, and you your avowing; for this character might as well have been borrowed from some of the stalls in Bedlam, or any of your own hair-brained cox-combs which you call heroes, and persons of honour. I remember just such another fuming Achilles in Shakespeare, one ancient Pistol, whom he avows to be a man of so fiery a temper, and so impatient of an injury, even from Sir John ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... some very beautiful new buildings should be erected in Moorfields, in so shocking a situation as between Bedlam and St. Luke's Hospital; and said she could not live there. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Madam, you see nothing there to hurt you. You no more think of madness by having windows that look to Bedlam, than you think of death by having ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... new comers to "treat all hands." Then commenced a course of unrestrained dissipation, which was not interrupted so long as their money held out. They became uproarious, and took a strange pleasure in enacting scenes, which should never be witnessed out of Bedlam. But as their money diminished their landlord gave them the cold shoulder; their love of frolic and fighting was sensibly lessened, and their spirits at last fell to zero on being told by their sympathizing host, who kept a careful watch over their ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

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

... 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

... built into side-walls; of machicolated gateways; of rocks and roof-tops tumbling about our ears; and within the street was sounding the babel of a shrieking troop of men and women. Porters, peasants, and children were clamoring about our cartwheels like so many jackals. The bedlam did not cease as we stopt before a brightly-lit ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... promontory to promontory, and back 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. "You're all right ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London

... "Hospitium Mente Captorum Londinense. Frontispicium Hospitii (vulgo Bedlam dicti) mente captis destinati, sub auspiciis colendissimi viri Gulielmi Turner Equitis aurati Senatoris non ita pridem Praetoris Londini Praesidis dignissimi nec non Beniamini Ducane Armigeri Thesaurarii fidelissimi; caeterorumque ejusdem Hospitii Gubernatorum ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... it was dizzy work, amid such fermentation of opinions as was going on in the general brain of the Community. It was a kind of Bedlam, for the time being, although out of the very thoughts that were wildest and most destructive might grow a wisdom, holy, calm, and pure, and that should incarnate itself with the substance of a noble ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the obligation I have stolen your hand in marriage. What, madam! do you indeed pretend that any person outside of Bedlam would value you at less? Believe me, your perfections are of far more worth. All persons recognize that save yourself, incomparable Esther Jane; and yet, so patent is the proof of my contention, I dare to leave the verdict ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... doe wade so farre, revoke to minde the bedlam boy. That in his forged wings of waxe ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various

... "Two lunatics from Bedlam," whispered the angry Holloway. "If I was Flynn I would see the colour of their money ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... threat'ning jut like precipices; O'er-arching, mouldy, gloom-inspiring coves, Supporting roofs fantastic, stony groves; Windows and doors, in nameless sculpture 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... martyrdom; his one supporting solace lay in the thought of the little lad at Canterbury. All the old troubles were revived; from morning to night the house rang with brawls between mistress and servants; in the paroxysms favoured by her physical condition, Ada behaved like a candidate for Bedlam, and more than once obliged her husband to seek temporary peace in lodgings. He left home at eight o'clock every morning, and returned as late as possible. The necessity of passing long evenings made him haunt places of entertainment, ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... gunwale 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, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood

... all in vain," he replied. "He wishes war, and you do not even dream how far he means to carry it. When listening to him, one believes him to be either a demigod, to whom temples should be built, or a lunatic, who should be sent to Bedlam!" [Footnote: Count Louis de Narbonne's own words.—Vide "Souvenir," ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... out, and what with the crackling of the hungry flames, the neighing of the horses that had drawn the fire-engine to the spot, the whooping of gangs of delighted boys, and a lot of other miscellaneous sounds, Bedlam seemed to have broken loose in Stanhope on this night ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren

... Bedlam began again. Like the fool who shouts "Fire!" in a throng, this brainless individual revived all the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... those rooms of bedlam you call the "excitable wards." They who enter leave all hope (of the friends) behind. Is there special need in these regions of despair and mental chaos that the mere pounds and strength shall be kept up? What will be lost by protracted fasts? ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey

... slaves—from all which slavish reasoning, a plain man who had not been informed it was concocted by Europe's pet philosopher, would infallibly conclude some unfortunate lunatic had given birth to it. That there is no creature now tenanting Bedlam who would or could scribble purer nonsense about God than this of Newton's, we are well convinced—for how could the most frenzied of brains imagine anything more repugnant to every principle of good sense than a self-existent, eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent Being, creator of all the ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... extremely amusing, of course, but utterly mad and very mal entouree. Most of the people she has about her ought to be in prison or Bedlam: especially that unspeakable Madame Adelschein, who's a candidate for both. My aunt's an angel, but she's been weak enough to let Lili turn the Hotel de Dordogne into an annex of Montmartre. Of course you'll have to show yourself there now and then: in these days families like ours ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... 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 only of that one chamber, ever accursed, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... and then get nervous. 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 shovelling the hay and the grain into these stomachs. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... between it and the Zoo, made it a shining mark for the Hun bombers. But we stood our ground fearlessly through all these raids, listening to the din of this aerial warfare, awed not so much by the explosions as by the bedlam created in the Zoo, where, as soon as a raid was on, the lions roared, elephants madly trumpeted, monkeys chattered, parrots shrieked, and wolves ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson

... they are to play at brag till five in the morning, and then come back—I suppose, to look for the bones of their husbands and families under the rubbish. The prophet of all this (next to the Bishop of London) is a trooper of Lord Delawar's, who was yesterday sent to Bedlam. His colonel sent to the man's wife, and asked her if her husband had ever been disordered before. She cried, "Oh dear! my lord, he is not mad now; if your lordship would but get any sensible man to examine him, you would find he is quite in ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... 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 yards of me, and presently a magnificent stag as big as a cow came slowly ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... things. I can only remember some wild raving I indulged in, and some undeserved rudeness I displayed towards you. But, will you believe, the instant you left me, I recovered my right mind. I am like one returned from bedlam, cured, and you will pardon any incivility I may have done you in my peculiar state, I'm sure, since you speak of having ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... de time I'se seed my Mammy come back from Barber's Crick wid a string of fish 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 ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... novel, a pathological study. A couple of months later I was going home one night in a nasty drunken condition. . . . I lighted a candle, and lo and behold! Sofya Mihailovna was sitting on my sofa, and she was drunk, too, and in a frantic state—as wild as though she had run out of Bedlam. 'Give me back my money,' she said, 'I have changed my mind; if I must go to ruin I won't do it by halves, I'll have my fling! Be quick, you scoundrel, give me my money!' A ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov



Words linked to "Bedlam" :   institution, asylum, balagan, psychiatric hospital, mental institution, insane asylum, confusion, mental hospital, topsy-turvydom, mental home



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