It's been said that "writers lose themselves in their words, carefully woven into sentences" (Jason Skinner), but did you know that each letter of those words is a carefully woven tapestry in itself?  We find our proof in Oracles from the Poets: A Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room by Caroline Howard Gilman, 1845.

Here's a precursor to shadow puppetry, from The Art of Projecting by Amos Emerson Dolbear, 1877.

"They each sat watching their money."  From The Phantom Ship by Frederick Marryat and illustrated by H. R. Millar, 1896.

An illustration from Jack in the Box by Robert Ellice Mack (1888).

"Weltschmerz."  From Peter Ibbetson by George Du Maurier (1892).

"These experiments re-invoke puppetry's recurrent philosophical issues: what constitutes a puppet?  What is human agency?" —The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance, 2014

From La Vie à Montmartre by Georges Montorgueil and illustrated by Pierre Vidal, 1899.

"A comprehensive yawn" from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain.

"The self and the other are just two sides of the same coin."

"It was the cat": an illustration from A Tramp Abroad by Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1880).

Every nightingale has a colon, which absorbs water and electrolytes.  From The Nightingale by Richard Andre (1899).

An illustration from an 1841 issue of Punch magazine.

"Alone in the ruin of her world," from There Once Was a Prince by Mary E. Mann, 1896.

"Sejanus— 'Great and high, / The world knows only two, that's Me and I."  From Tommy Toddles's Comic Almenak, 1862.

Here's a precursor to Cat People, from Travels in Africa During the Years 1875-1878 by Wilhelm Junker (1890).  The caption reads: "A leopard in our bedroom."