"Genuine cousins of pearl."  From Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1860.

We actually traced our ancestry to the second, third, and fourth figures in this illustration from The Popular History of England by Charles Knight, 1854.  The secret?  We followed the techniques in Heirs to the Queen of Hearts: Tracing Magical Genealogy.

"Skipped round it in emulation of the faeries," from The Dwarf's Chamber and Other Stories by Fergus Hume, 1896.

The Latin phrase says that times change, and we change with them.  But the illustration reminds us that we can face backwards and might even gain an umbrella along the way.  This illustration encapsulates our Oddfellow approach to life.  We're reminded of a moment in childhood, when the family car was passing by a horrendously stinky paper manufacturing plant.  We suggested that everyone breathe through their mouths until we moved out of range of the stench.  Our kid brother — with all the wisdom of the eternal twelve-year-old — sneered derisively, announcing what was obvious to him, that we'd be inhaling the fumes either way.  We remained silent, too dumbfounded to communicate what was obvious to us, that just because one has to breathe it doesn't mean one can be forced to smell it.  So, too, in this illustration — just because the pony is charging ahead doesn't mean we can't look whichever way we choose and keep an eye out for an umbrella and medicine bag to make the journey more bearable.

From St. Nicholas, 1897.

Q: How is a jack-in-the-box like Norma Desmond?

A: They're both still big; it's the pictures that got small.

Here's a precursor to Edward Gorey's tassel people (inset), from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1860.

"Jumping Methodists in Wales," from The Geographical Encyclopædia, 1826.

Cloven Hoof the Demon Buffalo or The Border Vultures, 1890.

Ornate borders and frames are formed slowly, carefully "grown" like topiaries.  We find this adolescent frame in Time's Footsteps: A Record of Red Letter Days and Events, 1890.

We presume that gun is a "repeater."  From Whims and Oddities in Prose and Verse by Thomas Hood, 1829.  The caption reads, "Very deaf, indeed."

From Deux Années au Brésil by Françcois Biard, 1862.

Pushed out of bed by an ill-tempered lily, from "A Flower of Prey" by Mildred Howells, in St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.

Even before the controversy of Google Maps' satellite imagery, some very famous addresses have been leaked to the general public.  For example, here's "The residence of Mr. Heaven," from Picnic, an Illustrated Guide to Ilfracombe and North Devon, 1890.

Here's a different drummer from St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.

Here's a macabre invitation to a burial from An Historical Account of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters of the City of London by Edward Basil Jupp, 1848.

Yes, the opposite of a promised striptease is a threat to put on one's coat.  From The Perils of Certain English Prisoners by Charles Dickens, 1857.

"A hand he saw stretch'd like a claw," from The Vision of Misery Hill by Miles I'anson, 1891.

Science and Religion (holding a record book and a Bible) seek reconciliation through the goddess of Reason.  Above Reason's throne are the words analogy, perception, facts, logic, investigation, inference, and intelligence.  At Reason's feet is a sacrificed ball-and-chain of bigotry and dogma.  From Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

We're guessing that this guy was a real tool.  From from Prose and Verse by William James Linton, 1836.

The parts of the nose as indicators of character, from How to Know Human Nature: Its Inner States and Outer Forms by William Walker Atkinson, 1919.