From The Bab Ballads, written and illustrated by William Schwenck Gilbert, 1898.

Here's a precursor to the "dancing pigs" of computer security: "Given a choice between dancing pigs and security, users will pick dancing pigs every time" (Gary McGraw and Edward Felten, Securing Java, 1999).  From North Adams Normal School's Normalogue yearbook, 1914.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1877.

From Lucifer in London, 1885.  Speaking of which, what exactly are a snowball's chances in hell?  See A Snowball's Chance in Hell.

"The wine circulated languidly," an illustration from Handley Cross; or, Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt by Robert Smith Surtees, 1892.

The Devil and Medusa dancing the Cachuca, from A Fortnight in Ireland by Francis Bond Head, 1852.

From Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century, 1882

From The Briar Patch by Sweet Briar College, 1920.

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

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

"And make the puppy dance a jig, / When he began to quote Augustine."  From Every-day Characters by Winthrop Mackworth Praed and illustrated by Cecil Charles Windsor, 1896.

"Seven or eight times they passed through the fire," from The Dacoit's Treasure by Henry Charles Moore, 1897.

"Dancing under difficulties," from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain.

An illustration from The Kitchen Maid by J. Bernard Partridge (1896).  The caption reads: "Quick and light, hop! goes the Fairy!"

Here's the original 'Twinkle Toes.' From Plain or Ringlets by Robert Smith Surtees (1892).  The caption reads: "Prince Pirouetteza."

"An extemporaneous No-Popery Dance."  An illustration from The Letters of Charles Dickens (1893).

This "old-fashioned break-down," from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883), predates by three years Sigmund Freud's private practice specializing in nervous disorders.