Dates in Books

27 July. – No news from Jonathan.

26 July. – I am anxious, and it soothes me to express myself here; it is like whispering to one's self and listening at the same time.

24 July. – There seems some doom over this ship.

24 July. Whitby – Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drove up to the house at the Crescent, in which they have rooms.

22 July. – Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with sails – no time to be frightened.

11 p.m. – I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even him sleep, and took away his pocket-book to look at it.

11 a.m. – The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers.

20 July. – Visited Renfield very early, before the attendant went his rounds.

10 p.m. – I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner brooding.

This agitation came to a head in a meeting in the Methodist chapel at Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848.

19 July. – We are progressing.

So in good years, farm income soared; in depressions like that of the 1890s the situation was grim. By 1900 a third of America's farmers were working as tenants – hardly Jefferson's vision of liberty.

The result was massive growth in American agriculture – between 1870 and 1900 the number of farms doubled to 5.7 million, wheat production more than doubled to 600 million bushels, and the number of cattle virtually tripled to 68 million.

The depression of the 1890s brought to a head the mounting antagonism between the beneficiaries and the victims of America's frenzied industrial revolution.

For five consecutive years unemployment soared above 10 percent.

That summer the Regiment won national renown for its courageous assault on Fort Wagner, part of the defenses of Charleston.

The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 was intended to celebrate four centuries of American achievement since Christopher Columbus. Its "white city" of gleaming stucco and electric lights was a wonder of modernity and during the six months the fair was open 27 million people – equivalent to two-fifths of the U.S. population – came to marvel. But by the time it closed in the autumn of 1893, the United States was in the grip of the worst depression it had yet experienced.