Rigid as the tower of silence.  From Lady Bonnie's Experiment by Tighe Hopkins, 1895.

Use an ellipsis and then four asterisks to tactfully change the subject.  From The Judge, 1921.

"Fireworks in broad daylight are decidedly funny."  From The Idler, 1894.

"In a strangely silent mist all about her, the paper snow was still falling."  From New Adventures of Alice by John Rae, 1917.

The reader is here invited with asterisks to fill in a portrait of a water-nymph according to fancy.  From Some Welsh Legends and Other Poems by John Humphreys Davies, 1893.

"And yet—" [a very long dash followed by an isosceles triangle of asterisks].  From Possessed by Cleveland Moffett, 1920.

Here's a novel that begins with four asterisks, like glimmering apparitions from the past.  From The Omen by John Galt, 1825.

Columns of asterisks, as if depicting the mention of blood pouring freely as water.  From Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker, 1828.  By the way, we translate typography like this in our highly unusual book Annotated Ellipses.

These rows of asterisks are a veil of winking stars from the birth of creation, relating details that the author fears to describe.  From The Mythological Zoo by Oliver Herford, 1912.

Life: A Romance by three asterisks, 1844.

Here's how to properly notate a shower of good wishes and slippers, from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1872.

Here's a note signed "Yours usually."  From "The Diamond Beetle" by F. C. Philips, in English Illustrated, 1907.

Life itself has an anonymous author.  From 1844.

"The author was suffering from a combination of evils, want of rest and want of money being predominant."  From English Illustrated, 1907.

Is the cure a dose of ink?  (English Illustrated, 1890).

"P. S.—I am wore out."  From Wayside Tales, 1906.

Here's what it looks like when a fact falls out.  From English Illustrated, 1904.