We're delighted to learn that Fiona Lang is "listening carefully for imaginary beasts," as per our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound.  Lang is a writer in the Scottish Highlands who studies the intersections of the human and animal worlds as well as the uneasy lands that lie between what is real and what is imagined.

From Die Muskete, 1938.

"The faces made me shiver."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to make some changes.

"That's your misfortune, and not your fault."  From Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

"Wake up old man," from 1907.

"In Winter Dress."  Blue Jay, California.  Date unknown.

A, B & C (or, technically, A, C & B -- the logo of Adam and Charles Black publishers, London, 1913).

Said he, coldly, "What have you done with that horse?", from Cassell's, 1896.

"Ha! Tis he, the Maltese. Me rival," 1881.

An illustration from a 1906 issue of Puck magazine.   Speaking of which, what exactly are a snowball's chances in hell?  See A Snowball's Chance in Hell.

"He took in a card to explain the second ring," from Pearson's, 1910.

We spotted this spelling of "chaos" on the Drudge Report.  Indeed, "chaos" must be misspelled in order to be properly chaotic.

Here's a precursor to the "Beating Heart" ghost bride in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion attic.  From Jugend, 1896.

From Mocca, 1936.  We previously saw another deck of cards playing strip poker with itself.

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.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click for another version of the card.

"Smile and never let the sun set on your troubles.  Sit on them yourself."  Date uncertain.

Evolution of a leap year bell.  The handwriting reads, "This is just my state, but I hope not for alway[s]. —Belle."  From 1908.

From The Cuba Review, 1910.

Here's a cat o' nine tails from Cassell's, 1896.

An imp on a bubble pipe touts business card cigars, c. 1890.

Here's the spider of tuberculosis, by Basilio Cascella for the Italian Red Cross, c. 1920.

Here's the Moon Flower from Tilton's Annual Illustrated Catalogue of Seeds, 1893.

From Die Muskete, 1914.   Also very much of interest: The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.

Here's Merlin from English Illustrated, 1907.

"The Witch's Hair."  From Die Muskete, 1923.

From Purdue's Debris yearbook, 1910.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Here's a precursor to the "Gourmet Night" episode of Fawlty Towers, in which hapless Spanish waiter Manuel stalls for time when the duck entrée is extraordinarily late.  From Die Bühne, 1934.

Jean Genet suggested that the sun resists the moon's efforts to muddle, thwart, and counteract the precise measurement of days.  Genet says that the sun cleanses time while the moon makes it elastic and immeasurable.  Here's another way to cleanse time, from Mocca, 1936.

"Fate," from The Sketch, 1906.

Many are skeptical of "spirit photography," but here is what we know: (1) I took a photo of something "then," (2) linear time is an illusion, (3) you're seeing me take that photo "now," (4) there is a oneness.  Thank you for smiling.

Here's Switzerland's Teufelsbrücke ("Devil's Bridge"), the construction of which was attributed to the Devil (who received the first thing to pass the bridge in exchange for his help.  The people of the valley sent a dog across to trick him.)

"An Eskimo Legend.—Nov. 1, 1894.  Nooktah relates to me the following legendary conversation between an Eskimo and a raven flying over with something in its mouth.  'Sunah kingmiahpeu?' ('What have you in your mouth?') asks the man.  'Inukkoktooah mahmaktoksuah.  Eeoquaw; eeoquaw' ('The thigh-bone of a man.  It is very sweet.  Caw, caw'), answers the raven."  From Northward Over the "Great Ice" by Robert E. Peary, 1898.  (Note that the tea pot that steams brown bread and defrosts apple sauce technically relates to a previous paragraph.)

An apple is an apple is an apple because "an apple has established rules in a world in which an apple is an apple" (Martin Odudukudu, Thinking and Learning).  Our image is from the Fruit Grower's Handbook by William Waring, 1851.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to change the season.

"Woman with a goat's head listening to a man with a wolf's head playing a pipe."  Circa 1890.

From J. A. Everitt's Annual Catalogue of Celebrated Seeds, 1896.

From La Vie Hors de Chez Soi (Comédie de Notre Temps) l'Hiver, le Printemps, l'Été, l'Automne, 1876.

From Mocca, 1936.

1. A hat with an air flap for cooling hotheadedness.

2. A hanging drinking cup for the forgetful.

3. A portable shower for revivification.

4. A portable solar panel for low energy.

5. A perforated suit for the overly-dressed.

6. An outdoor suntanning lamp for rainy days.

7. A bathtub for soaking in transit.

On this human roulette wheel, "every one is whirled off as the wheel revolves."  From Popular Mechanics, 1908.

"The night has a thousand eyes," from The Sketch, 1906.

"He was being platonically petted."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

"Design for Meerschaum cigar holder."  From Fun magazine, 1886.  We also spotted the illustration that inspired the cigar holder, from a little deeper in the issue.