1909: The Age of Melancholy and Morphia

Here we read about a generation so ghostly-gone that their departed souls were being summoned in seances of the 1940's. In N.Y.City, suicides among prominent people seem epidemic. There is a wide spread belief that Mars has canals and an advanced civilization: a dizzying, new, accepted 'fact of life' that immured people from any more "future shock". There are cars, suddenly, but few traffic laws. There is 'wireless' and "musical sparks' may fly through the air someday...