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Boys are rushing madly hither and thither, while others are putting in or taking out pegs from a central framework as if they were lunatics engaged in a game of fox and geese." In the same year E. J. Hall wrote from Buffalo that his exchange with twelve boys had become "a perfect Bedlam." By the clumsy methods of those days, from two to six boys were needed to handle each call.
First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen feet in width; in quick succession come heavy, booming waves, running at an acute angle with the shore, breaking at once into angry foam, and wasting themselves far up on the strand, for a few moments making bedlam with any driftwood which chances to have made lodgment there.
Holmes left the surgeon to sip his coffee in solitude when a glance at his watch showed him that the hour of nine was approaching. Quickly he strode over toward "Bedlam," and sprang up the low flight of steps to the veranda. To his surprise, the hall-door was closed; he turned the knob, but there was no yielding.
This morning, the door from the dining-room being ajar, I heard a subdued sort of Bedlam in the distance, and finally went nearer to the scene of action, finding the cause in a heap of broken china in the centre of the floor. I glanced at the excited company, but there was nothing to show me who was the criminal. There was also the contralto, with a large soup-ladle in her hand.
In places the country had holes the size of quarries, where mines had exploded and shells from large calibre guns had detonated. Bedlam was raging up front; shells went screaming over us, seeking out victims in the back-country. To have been there by oneself would have been most disturbing, but the men about me seemed to regard it as perfectly ordinary and normal.
There was one other scout, too, who made a specialty of silence in that hilarious Bedlam, and that was a gaunt, thin, little fellow with streaky hair and a pale face, who sat huddled up, apparently enjoying the banter, laughing with a bashful, silent laugh. He made no noise whatever, except when occasionally he coughed, and the others seemed content to let him enjoy himself in his own way.
For ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour maybe, the ship was a Babel, a Bedlam. And then the tumult would die down as suddenly as it had arisen, and dismissed by the old man, the crew, with faces once more inscrutable, but twitching with spent emotion, scattered to their usual tasks. Five minutes after these singular outbreaks it was difficult to believe in them.
Poor thing! Where is she? 'Why, you old madman! said Jonas, in a low voice, and with trembling lips. 'What Bedlam fit has come upon you now? 'It is enough to make me mad, seeing what I have seen in this house! cried Chuffey. 'Where is my dear old master! Where is his only son that I have nursed upon my knee, a child!
At eleven Louisville and Transcontinental was selling the little that was sold at four hundred and fifty dollars a share, on a par value of fifty. At eleven-thirty it had climbed another hundred. The whole Street was a Bedlam, so they 'phoned me, and the newspapers were issuing "panic" extras. "Tell Davis to stop buying now," I ordered.
The inmates who had fought so desperately among themselves for the shelter it offered were now crouching and shivering with fear. Some highly strung individual raised a cry of danger. The next instant there was a wild panic which lasted a considerable time. There was a wicked combined rush to get outside, the men fighting among themselves fiercely. Outside, upon "the field," bedlam was let loose.
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