Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too. GDP measures the total value of output in an economic territory. Its apparent simplicity explains why it is scrutinised down to tenths of a percentage point every month.

From Harrisburg, they may reach York, Pa., and Baltimore, Md., by railroad.

Mark did actually feel that he was being suffocated, and the silence of the waiting congregation roared in his ears like a flood of waters. … His heart beat with such violence that, when he fought his way up and out of the great whirlpool and beheld again the pale, upturned features of his listeners flickering in the homely gaslight, he was astonished that their hands were not stretched out to succour him.

Well, isn't that just like a girl. All this round you, and you only see a bit of dust. It'll brush off. He patted ineffectually at his piebald shirt.