"You must have plenty of ghosts in Greek and Latin, doctor."  From Gryll Grange by Thomas Love Peacock and illustrated by Frederick Henry Townsend, 1896.

From Captain Marryat's Novels by Frederick Marryat, 1896.

"A rose may be a rose, but children are not children." —Mary Jane Drummond, Assessing Children's LearningAnswer: Children are a heterogeneous crowd of unique individuals, onto whom we project our understanding of what it is to be four – or seven – or 11 years old. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

To date we've never been menaced by books.  The artist could at least have magnified bookworms to dragon-like proportions.

From the Works of Charles Dickens, New Illustrated Library Edition.

Imagination and Freewill, from Cassell's Library of English Literature, edited by Henry Morley, 1875.

Dan suggests a book someone should write:

I wonder if anyone has taken the trouble to catalogue English verbs that are used both transitively and intransitively and which exhibit a substantial difference in meaning between the two. "He drinks tea." "He drinks." That sort of thing. For all I know, that's the case with most of them, and the catalogue would be a weighty volume. Transitive verbs are apparently an irresistible source for neologisms. You just check to see whether an intransitive form exists and is doing anything in particular. No? Dude, that's low-hanging fruit. "He walked"; i.e., "He was acquitted." I'm not sure when that one first appeared, but I suspect it's modern. If I were going to waste my time on such a book, I'd print the intransitive expression on the right page, with a transitive continuation on the next page (following an ellipsis, perhaps). It would be an entertaining read, as you could almost physically feel the shift in meaning as you turned the page, and besides, some of them are quite whimsical. "They parked." A young lady's virtue hangs in the balance. Turn the page.  "...the car." She remains intacto. Even more fun would be a collection of transitive verbs currently lacking an intransitive use but listed as if they did, and letting the imagination land where it may. Practically poetry. "He brings." Roll it around on the tongue. Suggests to me a generous and helpful type of person. "I like Fred. He brings, you know?" "Yeah, I know what you mean. The world needs more bringers."

Here's a precursor to the Ghostbusters theme (with the catchphrase, "I ain't afraid of no ghost"), from Thrilling Life Stories for the Masses, 1892.  The caption reads, "'I'm not afraid of no old ghostesses,' said Harold."

From The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby, 1866.

Asclepius [Aesculapius] originated as a sideshow attraction.  This we find documented in The Comic History of Rome by Gilbert Abbott A'Beckett, 1897.

"The ship that sailed into the sun," from Lilliput Lyrics by William Brighty Rands, 1899.

"Ill-fame and innocence" from The New Hyperion by Edward Strahan, 1875.

From In the Forbidden Land by Arnold Henry Savage Landor, 1898.

"His eyes rested on a form that made his blood run cold."  From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

Can you guess Major Twiggs' branch of the military?  From The History of Mexico and Its Wars by John Frost, 1882.

"A poetical ruin," from Love Lyrics and Valentine Verses by Charles Maurice Davies, 1875.

An illustration from an 1855 issue of Punch magazine.

In the game Grand Theft Auto V, members of a Scientology-like cult called Epsilon pray to the god Kifflom. We can offer an internet exclusive in answering "What does Kifflom mean?" The sounds of Kifflom, spoken backwards, intone the word malefic (from the Latin meaning ill-doing).  Note that the "kiff" at the beginning of Kifflom is the "fic" of malefic, backwards.  The "lom" at the end of the Kifflom is the the "mal" at the beginning of malefic.  

Tien (heaven in Chinese) into Neit (Egyptian goddess)

Mitra (Persian Venus) into Artim (the Greek Artimis)

Rama (love in Sanscrit) into Amor (love in Latin)

Dipuc (love in Sanscrit) into Cupid (Latin)

Chlom (crown in Coptic) into Moloch (king in Hebrew)

Sar (chief in Persian) into Ras (chief in Arabic and Hebrew)

"A snow-wave in Cheshire.  Sketched from nature, January 28, 1865, after a strong breeze of wind."  From Frost and Fire by John Francis Campbell, 1867.

"The crystal ball turned inky black."  From Strange Stories, April 1939.

From The Middle Kingdom: A Survey of the Chinese Empire and Its Inhabitants by Samuel Wells Williams, 1883.

From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"He is here now. Wicked doubter—beware!"  From The Land of the Living Dead by Neal Fyne, 1897.

"They danced in the moonlight on the sward," from Bladys of the Stewponey by Sabine Baring-Gould and illustrated by Frederick Henry Townsend, 1897.

Yes, you may . . . on one condition:

"I was touched," from Roughing It by Mark Twain.

Clouds are named after bird formations, as we learn in Aide-mémoire du Voyageur by D. Kaltbrunner, 1881.  [For Gary Barwin.]

The first illustration below is from Poets' Wit and Humour by William Henry Wills, 1882.  The second is from Departmental Ditties by Rudyard Kipling, 1898, and its caption reads, "Pagett was dear to mosquitos, sandflies found him a treat." 

"We must wish," from A Missing Witness by Frank Barrett, 1897.

"I tell him to raise the music, and it's 'Hang on Sloopy,' my favorite song of all time, and I remember thinking, Oh my God, it's really happening." —Urban Meyer, qtd. in Buckeye Rebirth by Bill Rabinowitz

"Cross, cadaverous, odd, and ill-natured," from The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

From The Man in the Moon, Volume V.

"He melts, I think.  He goes like a drop of froth.  You look at him, and there he is.  You look at him again, and—there he isn't."  From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

You've heard of sticking inhuman pins into a voodoo doll, but the old-school sticks human pins into a pseudo doll.  From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

From Leslie's Fate; and Hilda, or the Ghost of Erminstein by Andrew Charles Parker Haggard, 1892.

From Thackerayana, 1875.

Here's a precursor to Arrested Development's Tobias wondering what his daughter is thinking.  The subtitle reads, "She lives her life, and I get the pleasure of guessing what that might entail."  The precursor appears in The Lady's Manor by Emma Marshall, 1896.  Its caption reads, "What is my little girl thinking about?"

"Looking under sofas and easy-chairs in the company of a popular actress and a French maid," from Bushigrams by Guy Newell Boothby, 1897.

From The New Hyperion by Edward Strahan, 1875.

An illustration from Daylight Land by William Henry Harrison Murray (1888).  The caption reads: "We were too astonished at what we saw to say a word.  We stood an gazed in silent amazement."

From Récits d'un Touriste Auvergnat by Jean Baptiste Maurice Bielawski, 1887.

The Paper St. Journal reviews our imaginary Kafka parables, Franzlations.  "Sometimes maudlin, but always wise, Conley, Barwin, and Thomas induce you into a willing hypnosis as you ponder over the pithy blocked letters, scattered scraps of sentences, and gothic illustrations."  The reviewer, James Puntillo, credits us with constructing within the book "a firewall to protect against readers who won't delight so easily" in aphorisms*, and if it's indeed true that we did that then we'll figure out how to reverse-engineer our previous works, too.  Whew—it'll be a relief!

From Funny Books for Boys and Girls, 1856.

"The child of the symbol," from Sebastiani's Secret by S. E. Waller, 1897.

"Be especially wary when working or recreating around water, which seems obvious but bears repeating."

"Dans un pas-seul il exprime son extréme desespoir," from The Oxford Thackeray.

Here's some Droste effect from Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour by Robert Smith Surtees, 1892.  We're reminded of a scene with Matt Berry in The IT Crowd (below).

Sappho from Comic History of Greece by Charles M. Snyder, 1898.

"Discussing turnips," from Roughing It by Mark Twain.

"A witch taking Scotchmen to London," from Our Country by Benson John Lossing, 1875.

An illustration from When Life is Young by Mary Elizabeth Dodge (1894).

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 14
• 8-letter words: 1

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

"Doleful begins to feel uneasy."  And Uneasy perhaps exclaims to Doleful, "Get your hand off me!"  From Handley Cross by Robert Smith Surtees, 1892.

"I seed a passing of a many shadders," from Tales from the Veld by Ernest Glanville and illustrated by M. Nisbet, 1897.

"You eat like a Saint of Good Nourishment and they think you're responding to the medication."

From What Mr. Darwin Saw in His Voyage Round the World in the Ship 'Beagle', 1879.

Three suns from Bilder aus der Deutschen Kulturgeschichte by Albert Richter, 1882.

From Poets' Wit and Humour by William Henry Wills, 1882.

Comedian Stewart Lee would have us believe that Scotland hasn't changed much from this depiction in A Book of Scotish Pasquils, edited by James Maidment, 1868.

Call it a hunch, an intuition, a sneaky suspicion, or just plain being nosy.

"Sarah Terwilligar's attempt to fly to heaven [as] the world [is] to come to an end," from Upper Canada Sketches by Thomas Conant, 1898.

An illustration by Lawrence Chaves (1932) for de Quincey's Opium Eater.

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`-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `

Here's a precursor to Sluggo's levitating hat, from The Up-to-Date Primer by John Wilson Bengough, 1896.

"What nonsense, darling!" — a precursor to the unpublished comic novel Talk Nonsense To Me by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.  From Thrilling Life Stories for the Masses, 1892.

"Gradually, however, they assumed a darker and more mysterious character."  From The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott and illustrated by Fred Pegram, 1898.

"The voices in the waves are always whispering to Florence," from the Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

"The chair was an ugly old gentleman; and what was more, he was winking at Tom Smart."  From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but some people do it for attention."

From Travels on Horseback in Mantchu Tartary by George Fleming, 1863.

Here's more proof that everyone's an art critic: "This is a terrible piece of work," from The Lost Gold of the Montezumas by William Osborne Stoddard, 1897.

"Arise!  Arise!"  From The Decameron of a Hypnotist by Ernest Richard Suffling, 1898.

"But in the night he ran away," from Red Apple and Silver Bells by Hamish Hendry and illustrated by Alice B. Woodward, 1899.

"I will bury myself in my books, and the devil may pipe to his own."  From Maud by Alfred Tennyson, 1878.

"I dreamed a night or two ago."  (The awkward cropping at the top of the image is courtesy of the British Library.)  From Vagrant Verses by George Staunton Brodie and illustrated by Wallis Mackay, 1876.

Here's a precursor to Mount Rushmore, from Walt Mason: His Book, 1916.  The caption reads, "Like some lone mountain in the starry night."

From Thackerayana, 1875.

From Life in Brazil by Thomas Ewbank, 1856.

An unknown game, from The History of Herodotus: A New English Version edited by George Rawlinson, 1862.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt quips, "Looks like 'scissors cuts paper' to me!  I see that the judge's ruling on that play was overturned."

If this is a depiction of the Mississippi River, then our best guess is Memphis.  From How the World Was Peopled by Edward Fontaine, 1872.

Once a proofreader, always a proofreader (apparently).  From Mark Twain's Roughing It.  The caption reads, "Needed marking."

Here's a precursor to Flat Stanley, from Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

Everyone called a different question to the parrot, from The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls: Little Journeys into Bookland, 1912.  [For Gary Barwin.]

From Tales of Our Coast, illustrated by Frank Brangwyn, 1896.

"The phantom fight," from France by Leitch Ritchie, 1872.

From Les Merveilles du Mont. St. Michel by Paul Henri Coretin Féval, 1880.

"Going out with the key," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

This is the best "mustard walking in the snow" picture we've seen all year.  From American Cookery, 1914.

"He stood quite still and looked at me," from Ghostly Tales by Wilhelmina Fitzclarence, Countess of Munster, 1896.

"It's really happening, just as the cards predicted."

From The Hepsworth Millions by Christian Lys, 1898.