On the basis of two bits of evidence (but please send us more examples), we've determined that British humo[u]r can move any mountain (to the tune of The Shamen's "Move Any Mountain" or not).  Exhibit A: In Maurice Dolbier's Nowhere Near Everest: An Ascent to the Height of the Ridiculous, we find a character who boldly "contrived the removal of Mount Everest and the substitution of a smaller peak, in an attempt to create an international incident."  Exhibit B: In the series one, episode two of Absolutely Fabulous, a character is sued by British Heritage for shifting some ancient standing stones out of the way:

Eddie: Sued?  Why are being sued, darling?
Bubble: Well, that last fashion shoot you organised.  Apparently, someone moved a couple of rocks, or something.
Patsy: Moved a couple of old rocks?  My God!
Eddie: Stonehenge, Pats.  Anyway...
Patsy: So?  They should be glad of the publicity.

Britain's effortless ability to move any mountain through humo[u]r is unmistakable.

The phrase "ghosts of dead toys" delivers just one Google result from 1908.  Our illustration appears fours years earlier, in St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.

You've heard of somnambulists, and you've heard of escape artists, but here's both at once.  The caption reads, "Sylvester, once more sound asleep, sets himself free."  From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

Lawyer:  It would be enough to show that it [the Mediterranean] is in what — for the present purposes — can be deemed to be Scotland, and here we might usefully explore the possibility that Scotland, as we know it, may not always have occupied the precise position north of the border that it is commonly thought of as occupying today.  We are assisted here by the known fact that the general configuration of the Earth's surface, such as it is, was not arrived at overnight.  It is the end product of a not unlengthy process involving widespread upheaval over a period of several millennia, during the course of which things were in a considerable state of flux ... and it should not be difficult to demonstrate as an a priori possibility that Scotland — or what was subsequently to become known as Scotland — might, in one of the remoter periods of geological time, have occupied, however fleetingly, and prior to making its journey northwards to the position on the map that it has occupied ever since, [the Mediterranean].  If so, there would be a strong prima facie case for a reappraisal of the whole situation with a view to bringing the whole matter fairly and squarely within the jurisdiction of the Scottish courts....

Senior:  Sounds promising.

Minister:  Yes — I think one could give voice to a tentative eureka there.

[From Was He Anyone?, first performed in 1972]

You've heard of being raked over the coals, but here are some rakes under the coal [we're here all night], from Purdue Debris, 1917.

"A mirror doubles the scene, confirming what is at first hard to make out and then hard to believe." —Peter Schjeldahl, The 7 Days Art Columns, 1988-1990

Our illustration appears in St. Nicholas magazine, 1912.

Here's a precursor to 1939's "The Teapot Song" (a.k.a. "I'm a Little Teapot"), from The Nightingale by Richard André, 1899.

"Every evening at seven I ask myself: what are we to do?"
—Ernst Kreuder, The Attic Pretenders

See our piece on "Prometheus Found" (as well as a bonus anagram involving a learned owl) in the premier issue of Fiddler's Green, a magazine of "art and magic for tea-drinking anarchists, convivial conjurors, and closeted optimists."

"He came in thoroughly washed," from Peaks and Pines: Another Norway Book by James Arthur Lees, 1899.  (We're guessing that if Jonathan Caws-Elwitt were to distill this image into one word, it would be "cleansed."  That word happens to be one of his many contributions to the Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns By Sound.)

Can one judge a book by its first page?  (Spoiler: we do.)  We bought Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant after reading John Pistelli's piece about it, and we'll probably try to get through it, but page one sure did leave us cold.  (That's not counting Ishiguro's blatantly misused semicolon in the second line.)  We're initially astonished over the banquet of praise the book has received.  In fairness, one can't help but to draw comparisons to John Cowper Powys' astonishing Porius, which similarly explores ancient Wales and its mythology (only Powys, under the spell of Merlin, writes sublime sentences from the get-go).  Almost more so, we're still staggering from the utter brilliance of The Attic Pretenders, which presents itself as an actual artifact of the Otherworld (and may be the only one of its kind: the phrase "artifact of the Otherworld" delivers zero Google results).  (And thanks to Writers No One Reads for putting us onto The Attic Pretenders.)  Compared to the visceral Otherworld that Attic Pretenders captures, the first page of The Buried Giant feels like a child's chalk drawing.  While we'd love for page two of The Buried Giant not to disappoint, we have entire color-coded bookshelves of vastly better-written prose.

The phrase "a circle isn't self-supporting" delivers zero Google results, and yet here's proof.  From The Great Hall, Winchester Castle by Melville Portal, 1899.  The caption reads, "The back of King Arthur's Round Table."

From Songs of the Immortals, illustrated by Haldane Macfall, c. 1920.  (In honor of "Floating Head Friday.")

On the edge of understanding
Below, above our reason's sway
Is a ghostly world extending
Into cool infinity.
Hosts invisible protect
The path beyond the intellect.
—Theodor Däubler, "The Sleep-Walker," quoted in Ernst Kreuder's The Attic Pretenders

"Only clowns try to find suitable clothes. ... And they turn nonsense into a sacred rite. ... [E]ven Art often fails to do for us what a clown does.  Laughter and tears together. ... With his tragic clumsiness ... he lurches out over the reality that we have lost.  When he grasps for support he grasps at fantasies, and when he stumbles he falls out of the world altogether." —Ernst Kreuder, The Attic Pretenders

Fans of Harry Hill's TV Burp series (and only they) will immediately recognize this precursor to the hybrid monster Wagbo.  From The Oxford Thackeray.

"Why shouldn't I tell you the whole truth?  I really hope that one day I'll be able to see Time itself.  Not actually there on the face of the watch of course.  But one day I do hope to see how to see Time.  It'd be a discovery with quite unpredictable consequences." —Ernst Kreuder, The Attic Pretenders

On being bogged down in the superstition of our so-called scientific age:

"'Does anyone know how to tell fortunes?' asked Waldemar.  Nobody did.  'Or read a horoscope?  No?  How extremely backward.  How deeply we're all bogged in the superstition of enlightenment.'" —Ernst Kreuder, The Attic Pretenders (and thanks to Writers No One Reads for directing us toward this delightful book!)

This sounds disconcertingly familiar: "I bewailed my fate, and then sunk down exhausted," from The Casquet of Literature, 1895.  Illustration by W. H. Overend.

Futility Closet published an old riddle (dating back to the late 1700s) that has remained unsolved to this day.  We suggest that the answer might be hiding in plain sight.  Here's the riddle:

In the morn when I rise, / I open my eyes, / Tho’ I ne’er sleep a wink all night;
If I wake e’er so soon, / I still lie till noon, / And pay no regard to the light.

I have loss, I have gain, / I have pleasure, and pain; / And am punished with many a stripe;
To diminish my woe, / I burn friend and foe, / And my evenings I end with a pipe.

I travel abroad. / And ne’er miss my road, / Unless I am met by a stranger;
If you come in my way, / Which you very well may, / You will always be subject to danger.

I am chaste, I am young, / I am lusty, and strong, / And my habits oft change in a day;
To court I ne’er go, / Am no lady nor beau, / Yet as frail and fantastic as they.

I live a short time, / I die in my prime, / Lamented by all who possess me;
If I add any more, / To what’s said before / I’m afraid you will easily guess me.

Here's our answer, in black text on a black background.  Highlight to view:  A flame "rises" as it is lit, though it doesn't sleep because it is not technically alive.  The eye is a reference to the eye-shaped blue part of the flame, at the wick, that burns the coolest.  It gives pleasure and pain (romantic candlelight and burns to the skin of both friend and foe).  It's punished with many a stripe (uniformed firemen beating down the flames).  It ends its evenings with a pipe (lighting the tobacco, of course).  It never misses its road (the pathway it travels as it consumes fuel) unless met by a stranger (water is a stranger to fire).  It never goes to court because it isn't a person, though it is as refined and dazzling as royalty.  It is lamented by those who possess (hold) it, for it burns.  Its habits change often in a day, as candles, ovens, and hearths are lit for different occasions.  It lives a short time (not really such a thing as an eternal flame).  It has losses and gains — the yields of lost wax.

Q: Why, in the apparition at Fátima in 1917, did the Virgin Mary predict a war with Russia, when such information implanted that idea on a mass scale, with tremendous authority behind it, and went on to foster a World War?  Why didn't she predict world peace for thousands of years into the future? —Jim

A: The philosophy of Humanitism, outlined in Machado de Assis' novel Epitaph of a Small Winner, suggests that every man is Humanity in miniature, so no man can fundamentally be opposed to another, however much appearances may suggest the contrary.  "Envy is nothing but a fighting admiration, and, as fighting or struggle is the great function of the human race, all bellicose feelings tend toward its welfare.  ...  [W]ar, which to many persons seems to be a calamity, is really a desirable activity—a snap of Humanity's fingers, so to speak.  ...  The main thing is to fight.  Life is a struggle.  A life without fighting is a dead sea in the universal organism."

Solar flares are just the sun pulling his hair out.  From Boletín Oficial de la República Argentina, 1909.

From Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger by Alwin Schultz, 1899.

(This is our submission to Writers No One Reads, which is where we first learned about our very beloved The Secret Service by Wendy Walker.)

No one reads fine artist Rhea Sanders' guidebook to the fictional Fire Gardens of Maylandia or Sweetwilliam's Folly (The Tradd Street Press, Charleston, SC, 1980).  The author respectfully dedicates this wryly humorous, meticulously envisioned oddity to "the virus which gave me the fever which gave me the hallucination which gave me the idea for this book."  The reader of the deadpan guidebook is presumed to be a tourist to the state of Maylandia, in possession of a working knowledge of local attractions, so the mysterious nature of the fantastical fire gardens is revealed in subtle tidbits as the site's colorful and often controversial history is explored.  We learn that the gardens were conceived in 1720 by the first royal governor, Ferdinand Mayland, "during one of his annual bouts with a local fever."  The author dryly recounts how the governor persuaded the indigenous Changapod tribe to relinquish their sacred plains of flaming shale at the foot of the mountain they called "He Who Waits": "Since all objected, all were done away with.  This is indeed a sad episode, but it is well to remember that the Changapods had owned this territory for centuries, and had done nothing with it, whereas Governor Mayland imagined a work of art.  There were in any case only 370 Changapods."  As the history progresses, we become privy to intimations of "fireworkers" in possession of "the knowledge" -- carefully guarded secrets of controlling the shape, movement, and color of fireballs, handed down from father to son over generations.  We learn of figures with oddly Francophilic inclinations, such as the Governor's London-born wife Marguerite, who "spoke only in French, for reasons which have not come down to us."  We learn of the possibly addictive tea leaves that grow near the fire gardens and seem to treat the blue skin condition resulting from exposure to the natural gasses.  ("And why should everyone be either black, white, red, or yellow?")  We learn of several possible murders along the way, all unsolved, including one in 1927 -- the winner of a contest to name a new garden to express the spirit of the age.  A certain Billy Jackson's entry, "Jazz Baby," earned him a $5,000 check, though he was shot and killed on his way home and the check stolen.  "We in Maylandia often point to Mr. Jackson's Jazz Baby Garden when outsiders ask us about the minorities in our midst.  For what could be a more beautiful testimonial to our treatment of minorities than this Garden?"  We learn of tea plantation heiress Angela Longleaf MacDowell, who stood six feet tall and boasted, "No man on earth or beneath the sod has ever kissed the lips of Angela Longleaf MacDowell."  It was she who envisioned, in a dream, the memorial fire garden for famed local poet Cassius Augustus Robertson ("the story of Robertson's mysterious death at the age of 99 is too well known to be recounted here").  Profusely illustrated by the author, The Fire Gardens of Maylandia is a charming, deeply funny, and thought-provoking relic from an alternate reality just a little bit more smoldering than ours.  (Profuse thanks to Hilary Caws-Elwitt for recommending this book.)

We found proof that Robert De Niro is a time traveler, in Colección de Hierros de Santiago Rusiñol by Antonio Garcia Llansó, 1910.  See also our proof that Gene Wilder is a time traveler.