INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the tinted version.

From Cosmópolis, 1929.

"A sou-wester in a sea-side lodging house."  From Punch, 1863.

A World War I-era postcard by Arthur Thiele.  Speaking of a fear of cows (bovinophobia or taurophobia), we previously found a cure for it in this vintage ad.

"Nothing less than the terror of immediate extinction from an uplifted foot … puts them on the wing."  From The Pleasures of a Pigeon-Fancier by Joseph Lucas, 1886.

"His calm bearing suggests both ignorance of what looms behind him and serene awareness of his surroundings" (Esther J. Leong, Spaces and Time in Chinese Landscape Painting of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, 1970).  Photo courtesy of the Costică Acsinte Archive.

Air, water, earth, and the sun.  From the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1846.

"Something—call it a hunch—tells me this probably isn't a good time for you to give me your opinion on the subject." —Jayne Castle, Siren's Call

Non-circulating book.  See our artist’s statement here: https://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/?c=NonCirculatingBooks.  (Individual cards are available from Zazzle, and deep discount bulk orders of 10 or more are available from Vistaprint.)

"Its most important contents were two human skeletons."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

If there's a skull lock and you forgot your skeleton key, try working a beam of light into the mechanism.  Recall how "She springs a light, / Unlocks the door" (Dryden).  Similarly, "Morning with its key of light / Unlocks the dusky portals of the night" (Albert Laighton, Poems, 1878).  And "My light unlocks the stalls, / two dozen and one windows open— / all, except the window of the moon, / already painted on as shining" (Jane Shore, Eye Level, 1977).

From the dark depths of the human soul.  From Jugend, 1896.

From Die Bühne, 1925. 

The endpapers to The Magical Land of Noom, written and illustrated by Johnny Gruelle, 1922.

Thanks to Thomas Hale for offering a 4-star review of our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound:

Pictured: Spotted in the wild, our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound, in a London bar.