An illustration from an 1865 issue of Punch magazine.

"The secret enemy of teeth":  an illustration from a 1917 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine.

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.

An illustration from an 1895 issue of Punch magazine.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

"To read is to risk making one's self vulnerable, to risk encountering what Wayne Booth has called 'the otherness that bites.'" —Megan O'Neill, Popular Culture (2001)

An illustration from a 1908 issue of Life magazine.  The caption reads: "Lily of the valley."

An illustration from an 1895 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.  The caption reads: "Just Reversed: The Moon in the Man."

An illustration from a 1901 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "The good fairy Electra of the continuous current banishes the demon King Sulphur."

An illustration from an 1842 issue of Punch magazine.

Here's a surprising bit of Hermeticism from Arthur's Illustrated Home Magazine, 1885.  A lady faces the setting sun and transmits a thought-message toward the light as she touches a dog's head.  The Greek god Hermes (a.k.a. the Roman Mercury and the Egyptian Thoth) is a solar messenger.  The Egyptians of course represented him with a dog's head.

An illustration from a 1901 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration by Raphael Kirchner from a 1916 issue of Puck magazine.

Q: "Why should I not think the best of those who are kind to me?" (The Quiver, 1881).

A: "The problem with kindness, for Nabokov, is that most visible or public forms of it are fake" (Will Norman & Duncan White, Transitional Nabokov, 2009).