"The drumming duck."

"Don't be startled, my dear."  From Evenings at Home, 1839.

From The Ohio Farmer, 1908.

From Them Was the Good Old Days in Davenport, Scott County Iowa by William Purcell, 1922.

Here's who is minding your P's while you're minding your Q's.  From St. Nicholas magazine, 1900.  And note that Mr. Punch graces one of those rare drop capitals sporting a quotation mark.

From The Vision, or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri, 1916.

Here's our Droste effect of the day — Prof. Oddfellow holding his portrait in Jim Girouard's letter-dice divination book Journey Into Eternity and standing in front of a print of said portrait, itself in front of Oddfellow's photo of Portmeirion's camera obscura which features in the drawing.  

From Prose and Verse by William James Linton, 1836.

Many forces contributed to the sinking of the Titanic, as we learn in Wreck and Sinking of the Titanic by Marshall Everett, 1912.

From Life and Death or The Creeping Shadow by D. Lambden Flemming, 1873.

"The Dwarf of the Channel received the mysterious token," from The Commodore's Daughter by B. Barker, 1847.

From The Skeleton Horseman or the Shadow of Death, 1866.

Here's a precursor to Why Cats Paint, from 1887.

This 1906 spelling of choo-choo train, "chw-chw," is a Googlewhack.

Here's a precursor to the feeling when folks don't text/e-mail you back (much less actually write with a quill and bottle of ink).  From 1923.

"Help help!!  Please do not kill these or bacon will cost you one dollar a pound."  Photo by Leslie Jones, date uncertain.

From The Wheel and Cycling Trade Review, 1898.

From Poems of Childhood by Eugene Field, 1904.

From Monmouth College's Ravelings yearbook, 1906.  (For some unbelievably weird yearbook imagery, see our How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.)

From Aunt Carry's Ballads for Children by Caroline Norton, 1847.

From Le Diable Amoureux, Roman Fantastique by Jacques Cazotte, 1845.

Hotels are places people come to sleep, and thereby hotels are imbued with the dreamtime.  A recent study sought to explain why it's difficult to sleep that first night in a hotel -- it's apparently quite a widespread phenomenon, "sleeping with one eye open" -- but the study didn't mention what seems most obvious, that a hotel is saturated with dreams, and as we all know it's difficult to re-enter a dream that has been interrupted.  Plus, hotels are places with many, many rooms, which is significant.  We're reminded of a snippet (a passage we didn't already know but which we went searching for just the same, as one does), from Wild Nights by David Deida.

Here's a precursor to the 1960s psychedelic "liquid light shows" (note that the Wikipedia article was tagged as a "personal reflection" of "feelings," which seems somehow appropriate).  The effect of this 1910 postcard appears due to a printing misalignment of the cyan and magenta.  Viewers with color blindness may not see anything out of the ordinary.

After the Civil War, North and South were reunited by cotton thread.

Here's a precursor to this line from a review of the film Tusk: "You could argue that Tusk has a good idea buried somewhere in its hollow walrus suit."  From the Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1893.

From Once a Week, 1860.

From Life and Death or The Creeping Shadow by D. Lambden Flemming, 1873.

From Dead Man's Hollow, 1847.

Did you know that museums have their own weather stations?  Indeed, museum climate control is a big issue.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to deepen the sunset.

Here's a troll by Theodor Kittelsen, ca. 1920.

"The only certainty is that the insecurity will continue to mount, unless we can find a way to end this self-confirming and self-perpetuating quest for monsters to destroy." —Ira Chernus, Monsters to Destroy

Here's a precursor to the "Be Our Guest" number in Beauty and the Beast, from The Ohio Farmer, 1908.

The Homeric shield of Achilles from Leaf's Companion to the Illiad.

From John Bull and his Wonderful Lamp by Homunculus, 1849.  Also very much of interest: The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.

From The Adventures of Mr. Wilderspin on his Journey Through Life by Andrew Halliday and illustrated by W. M'Connell, 1860.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.  This should also be of interest: How to Believe in Your Elf.

Here are two random (yet coincidentally avian) pages from our book of imaginary Kafka parables, Franzlations.

"A question flies through the air" (Sungju Park-Kang, Fictional International Relations).  Photo caption: "Question Mark setting record -- stayed in air one week without coming to Earth."

From Aedes Althorpianae by George John Spencer, 1822.

"As we sailed aloft, I devoted myself to tearing him to little bits," from St. Nicholas magazine, 1900.

"This is the time when church-yards yawn," from Hood's Own by Thomas Hood, 1855.

Here's a precursor to the Michael Jackson lyric, "Beat it, just beat it."  Date uncertain.

Here, finally, is an illustration of what Tim Brough calls "the anti-apple or the negative apple."  (And this may surprise you, but the opposite of an apple isn't an orange!)  This image of anti-apples appears in Apple Storage and Packing Facilities for Southern Illinois, 1963.