"The sphere rose through the falling ruins of the house and soared up into the night."  From Harmsworth Magazine, 1901.

"Ever-pointed," from an ad in The Sketch, 1909.

"I have seen him repair a cat that had lost at least eight of its lives."  From Pearson's, 1901.

"I silently permitted him to bind my eyes."  From Harmsworth Magazine, 1900.

"An ostrich racer."  From Popular Mechanics, 1908.

From Die Muskete, 1905.

"The good-tempered man laughs," from The Sketch, 1901.

From Magic, White and Black, The Science of Finite and Infinite Life, Containing Practical Hints for Students of Occultism by Franz Hartmann, 1904.

"Never entertain the ___.  Say Skidoo!! '23.'"  From 1906.

The succubus.  From Droll Stories Collected From the Abbeys of Touraine, illustrated by Gustave Doré, 1907.

"The shriek of the sacrifice rang forth," from Wayside Tales, 1906.

An antlered money bag takes a bullet but crosses the U.S. border.  From Jugend, 1907.

You've heard that the money you touch is dirty, but here's why: money is squeezed out of people.  From Jugend, 1909.

The better champagnes hatch from eggs, as we learn in Jugend, 1907.

You've heard that a group of eagles is called a "convocation."  A mixed group of national animal symbols is called a "Byzantine system."  From Jugend, 1906 and the Daily Mirror, 1906.

"The succubus, or deathly embraces of the female demon."  From Droll Stories Collected From the Abbeys of Touraine, illustrated by Gustave Doré, 1907.

From The Sketch, 1903.

Here's Madame Square Root of Negative One.  From Jugend, 1904.

Everybody's head had been turned into that of a pig."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

The secrets of How to Be Your Own Cat go back to the Meiji period of Japan, when cat people wrote books in between naps.  For example, the author of the Japanese classic I Am a Cat was himself a feline: "Choosing a kitten for the main character has a two-fold meaning as Sōseki was, in fact, himself a stray kitten" (Aiko Ito & Graeme Wilson's introduction to Sōseki Natsume's I Am a Cat).  Our illustration from a 1906 edition of the book.