"If here at the end of ages this is all—a white face floating in the whirling ball."  From "A Leaf from the Devil's Jest-Book" by Edwin Markham, in The Man with the Hoe, 1899.

"The portrait of our father or our mother is a sort of crystal ball into which we look in the hope of discovering our destiny."  From The Collected Works of George Moore, 1918.

It's Greek.  From The Master of Mysteries by Gelett Burgess, 1912.

Sounds like a crystal ball: "Tracks of invisible rays seen in magic glass."  From Popular Mechanics, 1930.

Though these words apply eerily to a crystal ball, J. Milton Sanders is actually referring to a drop of water in The Crystal Sphere, Its Forces and Its Beings, 1857.  "Agencies are seen—like winged spirits of infinite power, each one working in its own peculiar way, and all to a common end—to produce, under the guidance of Omnipotent rule, the sheen of the midnight stars."

"I wonder if his crystal ball is a talisman, too?"  From Cut Adrift by Albany Fonblanque, 1869.

Pictured: In a magical shop at Universal Studios Orlando, we discovered a crystal ball that seems to project holograms of its gazers in all directions.  Here's the snap we captured of the effect as we consulted the mysterious sphere.

This is easily our favorite presumption of the centuries, that everyone has seen a Japanese crystal ball raised on the wings of an impossible dragon.  Would that it were so.  From "Of Camera Obscuras and Japanese Crystals" by Herbert Copeland, 1892.

We're often asked how we find crystal balls, and we can now reveal that our secret is the "crystal ball detector."  Note the importance of the "veto barrel," for when a crystal ball is just too cloudy.  Pictured also are two crystal balls we found.

INSTRUCTIONS: Click to reveal the odd fellow.

A brutal truth revealed: a crystal ball doesn't care what you want to know.  From The Crystal Ball by Jeremy Powell, 2016.

Signs, Omens and Superstitions by Astra Cielo, 1918.

"Pictures taken in darkness."  From Popular Mechanics, 1933.

"I saw in the crystal a girl, and behind her crept a fierce gorilla."  From Harmsworth Magazine, 1899.

From Pearson's, 1907. 

"He could see the word butler over the top of my head in flamin' letters."  From Everybody's Magazine, 1909.

If we told you what we saw in our portable crystal ball, you wouldn't believe us.

"Hindu and Egyptian crystal gazing.  By the aid of one of these fine perfect gazing crystals you may acquire the gift of clairvoyance and mediumship, and thereby become acquainted by exalted vision with many of the mysterious phenomena of spirit life and the astral plane."  From The Great Book of Magical Art, Hindu Magic and East Indian Occultism by L. W. de Laurance, 1914.