"Nothing very exciting to-day": no news is good news in The Quiver, 1883.

"What do the bells say?"  Is the older sibling teaching the younger to count by listening to a distant clock tower, or are the parents conducting a seance in the parlor, the spirit bells shooing away the sandman?  (Guess which one we think it is!)  From Little Wide Awake: An Illustrated Magazine for Good Children, 1881.

photo by Cobalt 123

"And apropos of nothing at all he adds, 'We are nice people.  Not everyone understands that.'"
—John McPhee, La Place de la Concorde Suisse

"Loaded:"  an illustration from a 1918 issue of Life magazine.

We enjoyed mapping out a fun Jonathan Caws-Elwitt bit.

Saint Dragon and the George from The Tomahawk (October 12, 1867).

We call this one "Beverly Hills 1902-One-Oh."  The caption reads, "You are the little brown lady who comes so constantly to my house."  It appears in The English Illustrated Magazine, 1902.

This bit by Frank Sullivan ...

If [Grandpa] was in a good humor when he awoke, he would take us youngsters up to Dick Canfield's to play games, but as he was never in a good humor when he awoke, we never went to Dick Canfield's to play games.

No family New Year’s get-together was complete without an appearance by Uncle Carlyle. Unfortunately, as there was no one named Carlyle anywhere in the extended family, we had to be content with a slightly incomplete New Year’s. Nevertheless, we had quite a good time.

"Move On!": an illustration from The Tomahawk (November 2, 1867).

"Time is so much more real than Space that it might be called the Begetter of the Illusion of Space." —Pelagius, qtd. in John Cowper Powys' Porius.

You've heard the expression "neither here nor there."  The "here" of things is your immediate environment. But what is "there"? Over "there" is nothing less than a pudding in the form of a lion couchant. We find our evidence in Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, 1898.

"The world in which we live[:] the abominable, sentimental, mob-ruled world of cheap newspapers and cheaper minds, where every imbecile is articulate and every folly tolerated, where the arts are dying out and the intellect is scorned, where every little cheap-jack knows what he likes and what he thinks.  Our moralities, our democracy, have taught us to suffer fools gladly, and now we suffer from an overplus of fools." —The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944)

"It's only funny if the audience (me, in this case) knows you know the answer is Mickey Mouse."
—Joel Siegel, Lessons for Dylan (2003)

Thanks to Geeks2point0 for featuring our photo of our books arranged by color in a piece about how "geeks hatch from bookworms."

An illustration from In the Sweet and Dry by Christopher Morley and Bart Haley (1919), illustrated by Gluyas Williams.  The caption reads: "Down with goose-berries: the New Menace!"

We're honored by this piece by Gary Barwin.

An illustration from The Last Sentence by Maxwell Gray (1894).  The caption reads: "Yet her glance did not blanch from the torturing sight. ... Should she crash blindly through the window-pane and shout the truth in their startled ears?"

We are excited to transcribe for you the sound of shish kebab, as revealed in William Castle's The Night Walker.

• MP3 Version
• MIDI Version

Indeed, as few have ever suspected, each roasted piece on the skewer is a musical note!  The final uplifting tone is, of course, the end-piece being plucked.

Before the discovery of continental drift, geologists elegantly explained transoceanic similarities of life by crediting giant monkeys.  Our illustration is from The Star of the Sea: A Historical Novel by N. Gregor, 1897.

An illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).  The caption reads: "The bears were walking about on the roof."

An illustration from The Mahatma and the Hare: A Dream Story by H Rider Haggard (1911).  The caption reads: "My! Isn't she a beauty?"

An illustration from In the Sweet and Dry by Christopher Morley and Bart Haley (1919), illustrated by Gluyas Williams.  The caption reads: "With bleak playing the rôle of customer he then went through a pantomime of serving imaginary drinks."

"What odd, misshapen, ugly things I made."  If only Etsy had existed back in 1719.  From Daniel Defoe's The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

An illustration from Modern Housekeeping (1905).

"Funny? Only if you could act as an outsider looking in."
—Maxine Hancock, Love Knows No Difference: Learning to Give and Receive (1999)

"An Itinerant Restaurant": an illustration from The American Kitchen (1899).

An illustration from The Need of Change by Julian Street (1922).  The caption reads: "To lean, vampire-like, and listen to the frightened babblings of my dreams."

This Nebraska/Ohio bit by Frank Sullivan ...

He made a few simple calculations, as a result of which he pioneered to Nebraska, so that when the next dust storm came up, instead of being blow [sic] from Ohio back to Holcomb Landing, he was blown from Nebraska back to Ohio, where he wanted to be.

I was puzzled to note that there is a place in Nebraska called Town in Ohio, Nebraska. But it turns out there is a simple explanation: it seems they named it after a town in Ohio.

An illustration from The Case of George Dedlow by Silas Weir Mitchell.  The caption reads: "I knew I was that boy."

An illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).  The caption reads: "He shook his fist at the sun."

Thanks to the Working Harbor Committee of NY/NJ for featuring our photo of the tall ship El Galeón.

An illustration from The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson (1903).  The caption reads: "The Law of the Three Primaries."

An illustration from Seeing England with Uncle John by Anne Warner (1908).  The caption reads: "He said no, he was n't a saint."

A pro said the children's book I'm writing is 130 pages too long (& nearly referred me to a shrink), unaware I specialize in the impossible.

"Not That Way": an illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).

An illustration from The Yellow Circle by Charles Edmonds Walk (1909).  The caption reads: "Dorothy took a chair before the crystal."

"St. Valehtine's [sic] Prisoner," from Pleasant Hours, 1888.

"The Tourist's Guide!": an illustration from The Tomahawk, (September 14, 1867).

An illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).  The caption reads: "I think it is time to retrace our steps."

This "Black Death Record" is a precursor to the music label Black Death Records, from The Grange of St. Giles, the Bass by Jane Stewart Smith, 1898.

The witch of Ben Y Gloe from The Art of Deer Stalking by William Scrope (1839).

An illustration from The Divine Seal by Emma Louise Orcutt (1909).

You've heard that a horse was a Roman senator, but did you know a buffalo was the earl of Southesk?

An illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).  The caption reads: "All might watch the progress of the phenomenon."

"DEVIL":  an illustration from an 1897 issue of The Idler magazine.

An illustration from The Encyclopedia of Death and Life in the Spirit World by J. R. Francis, vol. 2 (1906).  The caption reads: "The evil personage who is supposed to prompt the deeply religious to deeds of torture."

Here's a precursor to the modern computer from The Chase of the Golden Plate by Jacques Futrelle (1906).  The caption reads: "Suddenly he stopped and turned upon The Thinking Machine."

photo by Cobalt 123

"[O]ne woman, apropos of nothing, mentioning Flaubert only to dismiss him as a writer of no importance."
—V. S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization (2011)

An illustration from A Brief History of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers by Theophilus Charles Noble (1889).  The caption reads: "St. Dunstan gives a practical reminder of the power of the horseshoe."

"Deformities are only funny if they suggest postures an ordinary person could take up but would not ordinarily remain in." —T. L. S. Sprigge, "Schopenhauer and Bergson on Laughter," Comparative Criticism: Volume 10, Comedy, Irony, Parody (1989)

An illustration from In the Sweet and Dry by Christopher Morley and Bart Haley (1919), illustrated by Gluyas Williams.  The caption reads: "The Six Quimbletons or The Decanterbury Pilgrims In Their Artistic Revival Of Old and Entertaining Customs, Tableaux Vivants, Vanished Arts, Folklore Games and Conjuring Tricks Such as The Drinking of Healths, Toasts, Nosepainting, The Lifted Elbow, Let's Match For It, Say When, Light or Dark? and this One's On Me. Communion With Departed Spirits. Please Do Not Leave Before the Hat Goes Round."

An illustration from The Gate Beautiful by John Ward Stimson (1903).  The caption reads: "Atomic Ladder-of-Life: From solid—to liquid—to gaseous—to etheric—to spirit life."

An illustration from Jock of the Bushveld by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick (1907).  The caption reads: "The haunting mystery of eyes and nothing more."

An illustration from The Fur Country by Jules Verne (1874).  The caption reads: "To the icebergs! to the icebergs!"

An illustration from Carrageen and Other Legends by K. M. Loudon (1892), drawn by Edith Scannell.  The caption reads: "And the snow fairies came and covered them both."

"According to the Gnostics, we are already dead and living in Hell right now." —Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus

The unshakable Jonathan Caws-Elwitt discovered a precursor to the twelve British meals as depicted in the hilarious series Look Around You (2002).  Below are the twelve meals, followed by an account from Frank Sullivan's In One Ear (1933), including the succession of "bites" called tiffin, miffin, hiffin, and giffin.

"Please don't take this the wrong way, but I've never seen you this disorganized and I'm really concerned."

An illustration from The Divine Seal by Emma Louise Orcutt (1909).  The caption reads: "A few feet away ... stood Ozomoth."

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt shares a precursor from "A Trip to Hollywood," by Frank Sullivan. Cf. Python's famous "I'd like to have an argument, please" sketch.

"I am here to see the sights, and I have read so much in the papers about the famous arguments that you and Mrs. Weissmuller have, that I was hoping to see one before I left."

"I'll see if I can fix it," Mr. Weissmuller said pleasantly. . . . "Lupe! Lupe!"

[...]

"What you want now, John-ee?" she exploded. "Always you call, 'Lupe, Lupe, Lupe.' Why do you not leave me alone?"

"This gentleman wanted to see you and me have a little spat."

"I am beezy sweeming," stormed Miss Velez. "I have no time to spat wiz you."

An illustration from Hitting the Dark Trail Starshine Through Thirty Years of Night by Clarence Hawkes (1915).  The caption reads: "Writing a new animal biography."

It's funny "only if the listener gets the punch line by seeing in a flash of insight how a completely new interpretation of the same set of facts can incorporate the anomalous ending." —V. S. Ramachandran, Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1999)

An illustration from The Land of Thor by J. Ross Browne (1870).

An illustration from Oh Mary, Be Careful! by George Weston (1917).  The caption reads: "'Oh, dear!' she thought in sudden alarm, 'what's he doing that for?'"

An illustration from Philo Gubb, Correspondence School Detective by Ellis Parker Butler (1918).  The caption reads: "Mr. Winterberry did not seem to be concealed among them."

We're overdue to mention the tribute song to our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns By Sound, by Michael Red, who creates esoteric soundscapes for art gallery openings and low-speed chases.  Here's the track over at Amazon.  Here it is over at SoundCloud, and here it is at YouTube.

Today's puzzle grid, an Emily Dickinson quotation, appears over a dear reader's bookcase.

There's an 8-letter word that means unconfident.
There's a 9-letter word that refers to plants with four petals.
There's a 7-letter word that refers to fig trees, and another that belongs in the kitchen.

• 7-letter words: 15
• 8-letter words: 6
• 9-letter words: 1

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

"The problem is articulate: how to keep from the sea's relentless taking what life builds on its uncertain shores."
—Dermot McCarthy, Poetics of Place: The Poetry of Ralph Gustafson

   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(
`-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `

An illustration from The White Wife by Cuthbert Bede (1865).

An illustration from Carrageen and Other Legends by K. M. Loudon (1892), drawn by Edith Scannell.  The caption reads: "In another moment they would have seen him."

An illustration from The Bachelors Club by Laurel Zangwill (1891).  The caption reads: "I met him in the Atlantic and congratulated him."