An illustration from a 1903 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1876 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration of an owl tent from an 1899 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.

An illustration from an 1883 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1850 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from a 1914 issue of Scribner's magazine.

An illustration from a 1903 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "Peace crowns the old year."

Science dances with the fairy radium in 1903 as today.  An illustration from a 1903 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1867 issue of Punch magazine.

"What a night for spirits and kelpies, warlocks, fairies, pixies, nixies, and sperrimongles!  Assuredly, if ever there could be a spot and a moment when this dull work-a-day world is surrendered to the absolute dominion of elfin powers, it much be here and it must be now!" —Agatha: A Fanciful Flight for a Gusty Night by George Halse, 1860.

An illustration from an 1896 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "Hilda's self-control broke down completely."

Dedicated to Teresa Burritt.

An illustration from an 1869 issue of Punch magazine.

"I could have sworn I heard a violin playing 'The Last Rose of Summer.' In waltz time, no less."
—Eugenia Riley, Waltz in Time (1997)

"So, yes, the paragraph is arbitrary, but so is the sentence, and the word, and the phonemes within the word, and the connections we intimate between those phonemes and those arbitrary shapes we call letters." —Geof Huth