A wizard performing spells in his den. Wood engraving by S. Millar after himself, courtesy of the Wellcome library.

From Die Muskete, 1910.

"Are you sending blindfolded dollars abroad?" From Hearts's International, 1922.

"The root of mouse the pointing device is indubitably mouse the rodent, and the word is based on a transparent metaphor that should allow the irregular plural to bubble up unscathed." —Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language

Here's a precursor to the "Ask Alexander" search engine of the Conjuring Arts Research Center.

From The Ghost in the White House: Some Suggestions as to How a Hundred Million People (Who are Supposed in a Vague, Helpless Way to Haunt the White House) Can Make Themselves Felt with a President, How They Can Back Him Up, Express Themselves to Him, be Expressed by Him, and Get What They Want by Gerald Stanley Lee, 1920.

From Cartoons Magazine, 1918.

From Fun magazine, 1893.

From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1882.

Someone's nemesis left a threatening message on this yearbook page.  "It doesn't pay to be too good, but it does pay to be mighty careful.  Your nemesis, Julia Rosenfeld.  Remember Lab D!!"  From Hunter College's Wistarion yearbook, 1924.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Here's a precursor to Devo's rubber coiffures.  From Popular Mechanics, 1932.

A mathematician finally understands the notion of infinity.  From Jugend, 1911.

Previously, we saw how a sense of infinity can be heightened by floating mist.

Here's St. Profitius, from Die Leuchtrakete, 1932.

By Franz Sedlacek for Die Muskete, 1924.

"When parents name a boy William Slavens McNutt he can do nothing less than live up to his name and be a natural born story teller."  From Hearst's International, 1922.

Someone "should write a book on how to get stoned and sober in twenty minutes." —Edna Robinson, The Trouble With the Truth