From The Letters of Charles Dickens, 1893.  Speaking of clockwork, here's a link to our vintage timepiece recordings, hailed as a brand new musical genre by a critic in Sweden: https://profoddfellow.bandcamp.com/album/clockwork-remixes.

From The Phynodderree, and Other Legends of the Isle of Man by Edward Watson Callow, 1882.

From Cumberland and Westmorland M.P.'s from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867, 1660-1867 by Richard Saul Ferguson, 1871.

"And went on weaving her enchanted web of fairy tissue," from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott and illustrated by Frederick Pegram, 1898.

From Brazil and the Brazilians by Daniel Parish Kidder, 1879.

It's not that cats were bigger in 1882; it's the people who were tiny.

"Bud, Blossom, Berry, are you there?  Appear!"  From The Kitchen Maid by Mary F. Guillemard and illustrated by J. Bernard Partridge 1896.

From Το Ἐνυπνιον by George Gordon Byron.

From The Year's at the Spring; An Anthology of Recent Poetry, 1920.

An illustration from The Kitchen Maid by J Bernard Partridge (1896).

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

You've heard of magic dust, woofle dust, pixie dust, fairy dust, and foo foo powder, but these aren't mere figures of speech, as we see in the Catalogue of Sharp & Smith, 1889, p. 670 — a genuine magic atomizer.