From Voyage aux Pyrénées, Troisième édition by Hippolyte Adolphe Taine and illustrated by Gustave Doré, 1860.

From Festival of Song by Frederick Saunders, 1866.

From The Nightingale by Richard André, 1899.

The sphinx drawn from memory (apparently), from Ziemia Święta i Islam czyli szkice z pielgrzymki do Ziemi Świętej by Józef Sebastian Pelczar, 1875.

"Everyone always mistakes everyone for someone else." —Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, The Letter Killers Club (highly recommended!)

Q: I still remember a can of "sunlight" some long-dead relative sent to my mom as a gag gift. She put it away in a dark drawer. What else can you do with such a gift? —William Keckler

A: Pair the can of sunlight with a basket of kisses as a gift to Rhoda "The Bad Seed" Penmark.

Here's a precursor to Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), from St. Nicholas magazine (1915).  The text reads, "Is a stone alive?"

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

La reine Marguerite and René Magritte, though this isn't either of them.

Giving a warning too late to be of any help.  It's the oldest trick in the book.  The caption reads, "Take care, Mr. Malone, the stairs are slippery."  From Shirley by Charlotte Brontë, 1897.

We laud so many discoverers, but the discoverer of grapes surely deserves rhapsodies.  From Our Country by Benson John Lossing, 1875.

"It removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and, flinging both on the floor, trampled on them."  From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and illustrated by Frederick Henry Townsend, 1897.

From The Tragedy of the Korosko by Arthur Conan Doyle, 1898.

Here's a precursor to invitation-only blogs.  "He called aloud to me not to disturb his webs," from Gulliver's Travels.

In this still from The Heart, She Holler (season three), we learn that "the impossible is possible if the reality that you are in creates another reality where the reality created in that reality creates that very reality that in and of itself created that first reality.  If they create each other then anything can happen."

From Voyage aux Pyrénées by Hippolyte Adolphe Taine and illustrated by Gustave Doré, 1860.

From The Comic History of the United States by John D. Sherwood, 1870.

Here's a precursor to the buffet sneeze guard, from The Prince of Wales' Tour by William Howard Russell, 1877.