The Right Word

A tombstone-worthy sentence diagram: "If an inscription be put upon my tomb, it may be this."  From Manual and Diagrams to Accompany Metcalf's Grammars, 1901.

From The George Washington Ghost, 1926.

"Sweet it is to have done the thing one ought."  From Hoenshel's Complete English Grammar, 1897.

A florist innuendo joke from the 1930s, in Purple Parrot (1938).  "Do you have any pansies?"

"We drink that wine all day, till the last drop is drained up; and are lighted off to bed by the jewels in the cup."  From Manual and Diagrams to Accompany Metcalf's Grammars, 1901.

You've heard of "letters to the editor," and here they are -- a, b, c, and z.  From Avila's 1970 yearbook.  For what those individual letters actually mean, see One-Letter Words: A Dictionary.

"How far that little candle throws its beams."  From Manual and Diagrams to Accompany Metcalf's Grammars, 1901

The name "Vercingetorix Chilblains," as of this posting, delivers zero Google results.  From Purple Parrot, 1923.

"It makes a girl feel all creepy, having all that hocus pocus said over her."  From Dark Shadows episode 874.

From Harpers, 1932.  The article in question is charming and very funny.

Confession -- we, too, use "thee's" and "thou's" to deaden the buzz of living conversation.  From Lighted Pathway, 1981.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1916.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

Wintertime in Florida: the "reason for the season" rearranges into "seashore afternoons" (with a seahorse).

From St. Nicholas, 1913.  See One-Letter Words: A Dictionary.

"Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance."  From Hoenshel's Complete English Grammar, 1897.

We've found only a single other example of a "dithyrambic dither" in print.  From Harpers, 1932.

"We reach the goal when, in the mansions of the blest, Death leaves to its eternal rest the weary soul."  From Manual and Diagrams to Accompany Metcalf's Grammars, 1901.

This book's title is technically four digitate exclamation points and one pollical question mark, with an asterisk offering the subtitle like a footnote (cute to have a hand and a foot).  After the Turn On, What?

It's a good though rarely-enough heard exclamation: "'Time of Abraham!' I exclaimed."  From The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander by Frank R. Stockton and illustrated by Reginald B. Birch, 1899.