From The Revelations of a Sprite, written and illustrated by Auber Melville Jackson, 1897.  The caption reads: "Two spiders brought her a dead fly."

Capital M has four legs with extraordinarily well-developed calves, from The Oxford Thackeray.

A class in mesmerism?  From Stories in Rhyme for Holiday Time, written by Edward Jewitt Wheeler and illustrated by Walter Satterlee, 1884.

Talk about cycling under the stars.  From The Adventures of Six Young Men in the Wilds of Maine and Canada by Charles Asbury Stephens, 1884.

"How Table Mountain got its cloud," from South Africa by Ian Duncan Colvin, 1909.

Death hides behind a sports mask, from Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

The last of the Graces, from Death's Doings, illustrated by Richard Dagley, 1827.

Here's a precursor to Ram Dass's "be here now," from Canadian Grocer, 1898.

"I am a terrible person when provoked," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, edited by Percy Bolingbroke Saint John, 1884.

Did you know that drop caps were once more difficult to work with?  From Zigzag Journeys in the Western States of America by Hezekiah Butterworth, 1884

From Community English by Mildred Flagg, 1921.  The text on the tree reads, "Japanese reading and writing books are odd[ly] printed.  Read from right to left.  First page is at back.  Lines run up and down.  Address is backward.  Words are painted with brushes."

From The Golden Lake by William Carlton Dawe, 1890.

"Ain't dat wonderful," from Clemson University's Taps yearbook, 1918.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

"A nightmare," an illustration from Handley Cross; or, Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt by Robert Smith Surtees, 1892.

"Who is it?  What is it?  Who speaks?"  From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

Well, we know how they got to Europe: they flew!

From Harvard Inside-Out by Elmer Elsworth Hägler, 1916.

Whether particles or waves, sunbeams are carried by cherubs, as this ad from 1892 confirms.

"We really cannot go about 'objects,'" from The Foreign Freaks of Five Friends by C. A. Jones, 1882.

What's the word for being "Tired of sitting on an iron seat among the straightly-clipped boxwood trees side by side with Aunt Deb"?  From Silverton Court by Winifred Taylor, 1885.

When enough isn't enough, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.

Revealed: here's why swing music originated in the big city.  From The Saturday Evening Post, 1920.

From L'Espagne Pittoresque, Artistique et Monumeatale by Manuel Galo de Cuendias, 1848.

"At least, sir, spare yourself for the present."  From By Proxy by James Payne and illustrated by A. Hopkins, 1878.

"This hat" speaks for itself.  From London and Paris through Indian Spectacles, 1897.

From The Chronicles of a Garden by Henrietta Wilson, 1864.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1903.

We're more geologically agnostic, but here's a book on Skepticism in Geology from 1878.

"A pleasure excursion," from The Foreign Freaks of Five Friends by C. A. Jones, 1882.

How to transform into an octopus, Step One (apparently).  From The Illinois Teacher, 1855.

From The Forum, 1919.

"He evidently thought his audience could not have enough of it," from Miss Misanthrope by Justin MacCarthy and illustrated by Arthur Hopkins, 1878.

From Lucifer in London, 1885.  Speaking of which, what exactly are a snowball's chances in hell?  See A Snowball's Chance in Hell.

"Curfew shall will not ring tonight," from Harvard Inside-Out by Elmer Elsworth Hägler, 1916.

"Do not depend on the sun," from an ad in St. Nicholas magazine, 1903.

From Oeuvres Complètes de Grécourt, 1796.

"The wine circulated languidly," an illustration from Handley Cross; or, Mr. Jorrocks's Hunt by Robert Smith Surtees, 1892.

"A dignitary of the church laid low," from The Foreign Freaks of Five Friends by C. A. Jones, 1882.

As the symmetric property states, if a = b then b = a.  Antichrist the Pope of Rome: or, The Pope of Rome is Antichrist by Thomas Beard, 1625.  The math checks!

"I shall tell you a great secret my friend.  Do not wait for the last judgement.  It takes place every day." —Albert Camus

Here's a precursor to the film Strange Days, from an 1892 ad.

"I am bamboozled and led a dance."  From An African Millionaire by Grant Allen, 1897.

"The temple in the wood," from Ready and Willing, or Guy Powers' Watchword by J. T. Hopkins, 1885.

"Hot, hotter, and hottest," from an 1885 advertisement.

"He groaned out, 'The curse has worked."  From Thrilling Life Stories for the Masses, 1892.

A horse groomed by ghosts?  From The Standard Horse Book by Dennis Magner, 1895.

From Letters from the Raven, Being the Correspondence of Lafcadio Hearn with Henry Watkin, 1907.

From A History of Advertising from the Earliest Times by Henry Sampson, 1874.

From Under Nordlysets Straaler by Sophus Tromholt, 1885.

"The Assessed Taxes taking their departure," from Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century by John Ashton, 1885.

"Siegfried, the dragon-killer," from The Rhine: Legends, Traditions, History, from Cologne to Mainz by Joseph Snowe, 1839.

From Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs, 1917.

We presume this is what happened to the previous poacher.  From St. Nicholas magazine, 1877.

This undead fisherman predates Dracula's debut in 1897.  From Holiday Handbooks by Percy Lindley, 1885.