"You feel with wonder that you are not doing anything very extraordinary after all."  From A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves by Sara Jeanette Duncan, 1890.

"Through gaiety shall I never more offend," from Home-Theatricals Made Easy, or, Busy, Happy, and Merry by Frances Elizabeth Callow, 1891.

From Prodigiorvm ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557.

Here's a wizard from The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford (1899).  Also very much of interest: The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.

"The black veil," from The Works of Charles Dickens, Household Edition.

"The work of Time" from The Doctor's Family by Jules Marie Alfred Giradin, 1884.

You know about caryatids, but what exactly they were holding up might be a surprise.  From Canadian Grocer, 1892.

From St. Nicholas magazine, 1898.

Here's a soap box chariot from Otterbein College's The Sibyl, 1905.  Via our blog of Magic Words & Symbols Spotted in the Wild.

The reason not to cast pearls before swine is that they want cold, hard cash.  From Blasts from The Ram's Horn, 1902.

"Azalia dearest, I'm in such a fright!"  From Home-Theatricals Made Easy, or, Busy, Happy, and Merry by Frances Elizabeth Callow, 1891.

Here's a bird singing a dirge, from Krag and Johnny Bear by Ernest Thompson Seton, 1902.

"Restored to life," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

From The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford (1899).

Here's a guilty-looking Pegasus from Poems by Robert Lloyd, 1762.

From Centi-folium Stultorum in Quarto, 1709.

It's been said that theatre reveals what is behind so-called reality and that a text exists only as an event that reveals the reader’s self.  And so we present our new Mimetic Oracle, which draws from 92 characters in six vintage plays, with 166 spoken lines and 31 stage directions in the mix.  With the system, you randomly draw five characters and generate a script to illuminate whatever drama of life you find yourself in.  There’s a detailed F.A.Q. which explains how the scripts are created, how to make sense of the dialogues, how to determine whether a reading is positive or negative, what to make of the various characters, and why these specific 6 plays were chosen for the system: http://www.mysteryarts.com/play/.

We generated a reading concerning the blood moon this evening:

Our scene begins somewhat ominously, with a deepening darkness: “They’re putting out all the lights.”  We aren’t told who “they” are, but there’s a force beyond our immediate control that is behind the darkness.   But then a character laughs, and soft music is heard in the distance along with some faintly chiming bells, so the feeling is less sinister than we might have first felt.  Another character bemoans that it’s so dark she can’t even see stars or the moon, yet at that moment an old fiddler comes on stage, sits on a barrel, and begins tuning up.  So the darkness isn’t foreboding but rather in preparation for a musical performance; house lights go down in advance of stage lights coming on.  The fact that the scene ends with a fiddler indicates that there will be harmony.  This is a decidedly positive reading, assuring us that any darkness associated with the blood moon is merely preparatory to something favorable.

I, Me, and Him, 3rd edition, 1891.

From the Guidon of the State Female Normal School, Farmville, Virginia, 1909.

From Shipbuilding from Its Beginnings by Emile van Konijnenburg, 1913.

"Mrs. Western spoke, or rather thundered an answer."  From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

Who was it who said that a nation is built one person at a time?  "Mrs. Barnaby commences her work on America," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"A visitant from the grave," from The Poor Girl by Pierce Egan the Younger, 1890.  (We like how the first A in the caption resembles a ghostly, upside down V.  There are V's and A's in "visitant" and "grave."  As above, so below.)

"We must give up hope," from Home-Theatricals Made Easy, or, Busy, Happy, and Merry by Frances Elizabeth Callow, 1891.

Here's a spirit trumpet interpenetrating a seance table, from The Reality of Psychic Phenomena: Raps, Levitations, Etc. by William Jackson Crawford, 1916.  We wish we'd encountered this diagram in time for our guide to Seance Parlor Feng Shui.

From the Kaleidoscope yearbook of Hampden-Sydney College, 1901.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

Here's the only way to fly, from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"Griffael—the law-clerk's devil," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.  (Would one have expected an angel?)

She's "at it," from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

Dancing to celebrate the destruction of the world.  From Earthquakes by Arnold Boscoqitz and translated by Coulson Bell Pitman, 1890.

"And the star of peace return," from The Blue Poetry Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by Lancelot Speed, 1891.

Here's precusor to Lark Rise to Candleford, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1898.

From The Ball of Yarn, 1854.

This is as good an explanation of the weather as we've heard from any meteorologist.  From Prodigiorvm ac Ostentorvm Chronicon, 1557.

"Carved figures on the banks of the river Irrawaddy, Burmah."  From The Countries of the World by Robert Brown, 1894.  [For Gordon Meyer.]

From Stories of the Governess by S. C. Hall, 1852.

"I'll have no whims," from Home-Theatricals Made Easy, or, Busy, Happy, and Merry by Frances Elizabeth Callow, 1891.

We wish our history textbooks had been illustrated like this.  From Abstract of the Elements of U. S. History by Henry Clay Symonds, 1887.

The colors combine into a six-pointed ghostly star.  From The Principles of Light and Color by Edwin Dwight Babbitt, 1878.

Here's the imp who governs the difference between the salad fork and the dinner fork.  From The Oxford Thackeray.  This should also be of interest: How to Believe in Your Elf.

From The Demon McGuire, 1885.

Here's the "Crypto" in broad daylight, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1898.

Here is revealed one of our secrets of manipulating time, from Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

"Paralyzed—but as malignant as ever."  From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

The eating disorder "pica" was once considered cute, as we see in Cherry Cheeks and Roses, 1890.

"Finding the key," from A Daughter of the Druids by Alice Kimball Hopkins, 1892.

From The Choice Works of Thomas Hood, in Prose and Verse, 1881.

More than one cow jumped over the moon, as we see in From the Earth to the Moon Direct in Ninety-Seven Hours and Twenty Minutes, and a Trip Round It by Jules Verne, 1874.

You've heard that money makes the world go around, but it's actually bunny.  From The Bashful Earthquake by Oliver Herford (1899).

From Old Times: A Picture of Social Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century by John Ashton, 1885.

"Well kin you beat that?  It actually ends!"  From The American Legion Weekly, March 17, 1922.

Here's a precursor to Cesar Romero as The Joker, from An American Girl in London by Sara Jeannette Duncan, 1891.

Here's a vulture with his leg in a sling, from St. Nicholas magazine, 1877.

"Here, this is Mr. Scissors.  From now on, he's your best friend." —George R. R. Martin, Dreamsongs Vol. II (2007)

Our illustration is from St. Nicholas magazine, 1903.

"Lady Lyndon and I had an argument on transubstantiation."  From Dicks' English Library of Standard Works, 1884.

At what point do we begin to question cultural norms?  The Gold Nugget Sport is from 1890.

"Thought reading extraordinary," from A Rambler's Recollections and Reflections by Alfred Capper, 1915.