INSTRUCTIONS: Click to change the evening star to the silver moon.

"A dream of the sweet bye and bye," from c. 1890.

"He lards the lean earth as he walks along."  A pig as Falstaff, c. 1890.

"Wear celluloid collars and cuffs" while playing William Tell.  From c. 1890.

"Don't be nervous."  From an ad for Carter's Little Nerve Pills, c. 1890.

We're delighted that acclaimed author Gary Barwin directed our post to his novel writing class at Mohawk College as a writing prompt.  He explains the technique here, and he also shares his own poem prompted by the image.

Cotton thread was handed down to us from the angels or the sun, as per one's belief system.  From c. 1890.

While advertising always seeks to grab and hold people's attention, it's no longer legal for products to manhandle.  Our ad appears in St. Nicholas magazine, 1907.

Here's your laundry, from a 1918 advertisement.

The phrase "thread the compass needle" delivers zero Google results, and yet that's how the North Pole was discovered.

Back in the late 1800s, seven caucasian women, one Chinaman, and one mammy constituted human diversity.  Surprisingly, a century-and-a-quarter later, that demographic is more accurate than not.  African Americans constitute about 11% of the U.S. population, China has 11% of the world's GDP, and seven out of nine of us are white women.

Egyptologists have overlooked the obvious — the wonders of the ancients were obviously accomplished via silk thread and cherubs.  From c. 1890.

"The perils of leap year," from c. 1888.

You're right — it's now illegal to use owls to hypnotize mustard shoppers.  Interestingly, we can credit this change not to consumers' rights activists but to raptor welfare initiatives.  This die cut trade card for Colburn's Phila. Mustard dates to ca. 1885.

Barrels of whiskey and moonshine are traditionally labeled with X's (one X being weakest and three X's being strongest, as we learn in One-Letter Words: A Dictionary).  But lesser-known is that coffee used to be roasted to a XXXX strength.  Our vintage coffee ad is from c. 1890.  The four X's on the vintage Coca Cola postcard below are, we think, unrelated.

Once upon a time, the melting of icebergs was a sign of progress.

We learned in Curb Your Enthusiasm that "on no planet is a shoe caddy a good gift."  That includes planets that are shoes themselves, such as this one discovered c. 1890.