How to quadruple your witchcraft, from Wehman Bros.' New Book of One Hundred and Fifty Parlor Tricks and Games, 1905.

An ornate capital O from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1858.

Here are some creepy old portraits from Broadstone Hall and Other Poems by William Edward Windus, with illustrations by A. Concanen, 1875.  One's canine or skeletal, one's feline, and one's avian or alien.  Note also the dimensionality of the portraits — the standing figure looks like he's ready to step right out into the room.  And even the drapery at the right is haunted.  

Illustration by Henry Holiday for Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876).

An illustration from The Sociable Ghost by Olive Harper (1903).  The caption reads: "But you must join us."  [By the way, this image is by far our most popular posting at our Tumblr outpost.]

"Allhallows' Eve": an illustration from an 1885 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

The silent groves, from Sibyl Falcon by Edgar Alfred Jepson, 1895.

From Wehman Bros.' New Book of One Hundred and Fifty Parlor Tricks and Games, 1905.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you're not very frightening."

This "apropos of nothing" moment occurs in the British comedy series Dead Boss.

An illustration from an 1881 issue of Little Wide Awake magazine.

"Where we do what cats may do," from The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray, 1858.

From Folk Songs edited by John Williamson Palmer, 1867.

"'Show us a picture,' said the boy.  'Tell us where to look.'"  From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

"George Washington could not tell a lie, but he was sometimes remarkably dexterous with the truth." —Dr. Boli

"It's such a comfort to play an ace, isn't it." —Ermentine Poole Long

"Repairing a broken hour requires three score of the 'gold-dust of time' —Colfax Burgoyne Harman."  [For Karl.]

"It bears repeating — the New Game must involve everyone."

"Doctors differ," from On a Mexican Mustang Through Texas by Alexander Sweet, 1884.

"Exceedingly comfortable," from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain.

"The world is indubitably one if you look at it in one way, but as indubitably is it many, if you look at in another."

Here's a precursor to the hot topic of immigration reform, from Face to Face with the Mexicans by Fanny Chambers Gooch (1890).  The caption reads: "Your American customs are too hard on me."

Many have speculated about the origin of the alphabet, but the truth is quite literally far-flung: like meteorites, the letters were excavated from the highest mountain peaks, as we see in The Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundevile, 1895.  The caption reads, "And they found the same letters."

"Mummies are dehydrated & they long for the blood of living words." —Peter Lamborn Wilson, Abecedarium (published by Xexoxial Editions)

"Following the invention-of-tradition logic, monks’ consciousness about their musical tradition would disqualify it as genuinely traditional. This is problematic (read: nonsense), to say the least." —Tore Tvarnø Lin, The Past Is Always Present

"He goes and comes with silent feet.  He sobs amid the rain."  From Red Apple and Silver Bells by Hamish Hendry and illustrated by Alice B. Woodward, 1899.

From The Baby's Museum by Uncle Charlie, 1882.

"The bewitching Scylla": an illustration from Comic History of Greece from the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great by Charles Snyder (1898).

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`-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `

"It bears repeating that we will never be less transparent, will never have less information, and will never be less connected than we are today."

From The Astrologer of the Nineteenth Century by Raphael, 1825.

"Four and twenty skeletons were in sitting posture round the table." From The Sphinx-like Head by J. Harry Sugden, 1896.

"'Pluto's chasm,' Luray caves," from Journal of a Tour in the United States, Canada and Mexico by Winefred Mary Howard, 1897.

"There are some things that can't fully happen.  They are too grand and magnificent to fit into an event." —The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973, Poland)

An illustration from A Diplomatist's Wife in Japan by Mary Crawford Fraser (1899).  The caption reads: "Out for a walk."

An illustration from The City of Gold by Edward Markwick (1896).  The caption reads: "There in the blackness of the night I saw two gleaming eyes."

From Buddha's Crystal and Other Fairy Stories by Yei Theodora Ozaki, 1908.

"Tosses them up to the ceiling," from Emma by Jane Austen and illustrated by Hugh Thomson, 1896.

An illustration from A Woman's Courage by Frederick Wicks (1892).

An illustration from Princess Sarah and Other Stories by John Strange Winter (1897).  The caption reads: "You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"

An illustration from The Child's Own Poetry Book by Horace George Groser (1887).  The caption reads: "They called me a destructive child."

New Yorker cartoonist James Stevenson prophesied Universal's Portofino Bay resort (1965):

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/The-town-has-no-history-Signore-It-was-built-from-scratch-three-years-a-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8641390_.htm

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Gee-honey-this-place-has-got-everything-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8477172_.htm

"Discovery of the gigantic head," from Treasury of Travel and Adventure in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1865.

From The Bashful Earthquake and Other Fables and Verses by Oliver Herford, 1899.

An illustration from Through the Dark Continent by Henry Morton Stanley (1899).

An illustration from The Novels of Captain Marryat (1897).

An illustration from Earthquakes by Arnold Noscowitz (1890).  The caption reads: "The scourge—an allegory."

Here's time lord Gene Wilder as he appeared in Felttogene, 1848, 49, 50 by Vilhelm Holst, 1852.

"Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky.  The glory of science is not in a truth more absolute than the truth of Bach or Tolstoy, but in the act of creation itself.  The scientist’s discoveries impose his own order on chaos, as the composer or painter imposes his; an order that always refers to limited aspects of reality, and is based on the observer’s frame of reference, which differs from period to period as a Rembrandt nude differs from a nude by Manet."

"Mandarin saving the sun when eclipsed," from Social Life of the Chinese by Justus Doolittle, 1867.

"The inside dog generally starts it," as we learn in While the Billy Boils by Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson, 1897.

A rose may be a rose may be a rose, but orgasms also come in a variety of colors and styles.

An illustration from On a Mexican Mustang Through Texas by Alexander Sweet (1884).  The caption reads: "Nobody had removed the relic."

Here's some vintage praise for what we'd later see on Twitter, from an 1889 advertisement.  "Very Original English!"

An illustration from The Child's Book of Poetry (1886).

Note the word "dirt" in the cloudy reaches of this as-is scan from the Internet Archive.  It recalls the Hermetic maxim, "As above, so below."  From St. Nicolas magazine, 1873.

Here's the "outraged husband" trick from Mysteries and Miseries of America's Great Cities, Embracing New York, Washington City, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and New Orleans by James William Buel, 1883.

From Fifty "Bab" Ballads written and illustrated by Willian Schwenck Gilbert, 1881.

Today we celebrate seven wonders of the world, but in the richness of the past there were nine.  From Across Three Oceans and Through Many Lands by Fred Reynolds (1898).  The caption reads: "One of the nine wonders of the world—the Taj Mahal."

"The Sick Wind": an illustration from Red Apple and Silver Bells by Hamish Hendry (1899).

Are such genealogical searches for foundations themselves evidence of the proverbial nonsense on stilts? —William Rasch

Genealogical research has some mysteries and paradoxes that nobody really likes to talk about. (We merely hint at them in our controversial Heirs to the Queen of Hearts: Tracing Magical Genealogy.) But we were delighted to encounter Scottish playwright N. F. Simpson's revelation that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes, in his precursor to Get Smart, The Cresta Run. The vital passage runs as follows:

Harker: Claims to have had two parents, I see.

Cask: That's right, sir.

Harker: One father, one mother. Seems as if they both had two, as well.

Cask: That's what he maintains, sir. Four grandparents.

Harker: And eight great-grandparents, by the look of it.

Cask: Yes sir.

Harker: The further you go back, the more people seem to have been involved. Eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, a hundred and twenty-eight. Goes on doubling up indefinitely, as far as I can see.

Cask: We did work it out, actually, sir. On the computer.

Harker: And what did you arrive at?

Cask: Well — the figure we were left with was somewhere in the region of eighteen million at the time of the Norman Conquest.

Harker: Eighteen million? But that's completely and utterly ridiculous, Cask. In 1066 the entire population of the British Isles couldn't have amounted to much more than a million and a half. At the very most.

Cask: That's rather how it struck us, sir, too.

Harker: Just doesn't add up, does it?

Cask: It's just possible that the other sixteen million or so were out of the country at the time, sir.

Harker: If they were, I'm not sure that it doesn't raise more issues than it settles, Cask.

Cask: I know what you mean, sir. . . . Eighteen million at the Norman Conquest — what must it have been at the time of Christ?

Harker: Astronomical, I should think, Cask.

Cask: Let alone the Garden of Eden.

Harker: How many people do you understand there to have been in the Garden of Eden, Cask?

Cask: Well — just the two, sir. So far as I've always understood.

Harker: Yes. That's what I thought. Discrepancy somewhere.

Indeed, the math simply doesn't work out, and one must confront a mind-blowing possibility. The thing is, when we trace our predecessors back, we invariably run into dead ends: thrice-great grandparents who seem not to have had two parents, to put it bluntly. There are so many folks in the tangled branches of the tree who defy further investigation. Were they not who they said they were? or where they extraterrestrials? or did they suddenly pop into existence like the virtual particles of quantum physics? These dead ends suddenly begin to make sense, mathematically. They can't all keep doubling, because world population surely diminishes in Prospero's "dark backward and abysm of time." For the math to work out, a whole, whole lot of our predecessors must have no origin. One can't help but to think of particle-antiparticle pairs. (Note that even allowing for postmodern interpersonal relationships and non-nuclear ["No nukes!"] family models, the data still tends toward exponential growth of predecessors by generation.) (As my co-researcher concludes, the walls are there for a reason, to protect us from what's on the other side.)

Yes, you may . . . on one condition:

"Chinese joss-house at San Francisco," from America Revisited by George Augustus Henry Fairfield, 1882.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but I've never seen you looking so ... normal."

From London Bridge to Lombardy by a Macadamised Route by W. R. Richardson, 1869.

"This may surprise you, but exercise undoubtedly has its drawbacks and precautions." —Naheed Ali, Diabetes and You

"It is a fine line between the servant becoming the master and the exchange of one master for another."

An illustration from Peter Ibbetson by George Du Maurier (1892).

Here's a precursor to Batman's residence at Stately Wayne Manor.  From Victoria and its Metropolis Past and Present by Alexander Sutherland (1888).  The caption reads: "Batman's dwelling on the Yarra."

Always remember: nothing risqué, nothing gained.

We're delighted to learn that the Mechanics' Institute Library and Chess Room has acquired our dictionary of one-letter words.  In a lovely bit of time warping, it's on the third floor with "new books."  Meanwhile, pictured below is the logic alphabet and chess pieces exhibit from the Museum of Jurassic Technology, courtesy of Moira Clunie.

"To photograph unspoken words, employ a camera obscura.  Note that only ambigrams will develop."  [Inspired by and for Jim Girouard.]

Here's a precursor to crowdfunding, discovered by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt in Bill Nye's Cordwood (1887):

Kansas.—Dear Sir: Not having enough room under our present arrangements, and wishing to make the Roller-Towel House the recognized head-quarters for traveling men, we desire to enlarge the building. Not having the money on hand to do so, we make the following proposition: If you will advance us $5, to be used for the above purpose, we will deduct that amount from your bill when stopping with us. We feel assured that the traveling men appreciate our efforts to give them first-class accommodations, and as the above amount will be deducted from your bill when stopping with us, we hope for a favorable reply. Should you not visit our town again the loan will be repaid in cash.

     J. Krash Towel, Proprietor Roller-Towel House.

From The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.