Check your pronunciation of the final line: "Her dainty ass-to-risk. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

From Medical College of Virginia's 1927 yearbook.

"A great mind failed."  From the Bombay Sunday Chronicle, 1941.

From The Case with Nine Solutions, by J. J. Connington:

“One gentleman seems to have been modest, anyhow,” he pointed out. “No initials, even—just an asterisk on the line.”
He flipped the programmes over rapidly.
“Mr. Asterisk seems to be a favourite, doctor. He occurs pretty often at each dance.”

When words fail to do the subject justice.  From (Stevens Institute of Technology's) Eccentric, 1879.

From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and illustrated by A. E. Jackson, 1914.

The title page of *** [Asterisk Asterisk Asterisk] by Michael Brodsky, 1994.

From Raphael's Witch!!! by Jonathan Blewitt, 1831.

From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, 1931.

There's a fine line between public sorrows and private pleasures.  From Public Sorrows and Private Pleasures by William Earle, 1976.

Here's the entirety of chapter 17, from Shaving Them, or, The Adventures of 3 Yankees on the Continent of Europe by Titus A. Brick, 1872.

Reblog if you, too, can finish off an entire cake.  From Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and illustrated by A. E. Jackson, 1914.

Here's a great test of your asterisk identification ability.  What are these asterisks?  Yes, they're footlights below the stage's curtain.  From Humorous Skits For Young People by Robert Louis Fontaine.

From Service of All the Dead, by Colin Dexter:

***

Flet Vewels dept.: "waiter than snew"

Bonus: "an occasional elongated asterisk of light"

"You slide the mask down the page until you see a new row of ___."

As we proved previously, it's a bizarre and wonderful phenomenon that whenever you see rows of asterisks in a book, they invariably illustrate the text either following or preceding them.

From a 1968 education monograph.

From The Outline of Everything by Hector B. Toogood, 1923.  

We've previously noted the mysterious phenomenon that rows of dots or asterisks in a text invariably illustrate what came before or comes after.  Here are three random examples from the same book: the first row of dots represents the holes in a belt mentioned above them, the second row represents the holes in the blanket of night that allow stars to peek through, and the third row represents a series of gunshots.  Watch for the phenomenon -- it never fails!

From The Land Where the Sunsets Go by Orville Henry Leonard, 1917.

An asterisk of time?  It's a phenomenon!  This one is yellowish, but there's a black asterisk of time, too: "In the black asterisk of time that I did not remember until now, right now" (Stephanie Gangi, The Next: A Novel).  Photo courtesy of temporal anomaly investigator Neil Hester.

At least we can all believe in something -- asterisks.  From What We All Believe by Rugh Cranston, 1951.

Stars are a reliable way to add sparkle to your vibe, even if they're merely chalked onto a blackboard.  From Guilford's 1966 yearbook.

It's a bizarre and wonderful phenomenon that whenever you see rows of asterisks in a book, they invariably illustrate the text either following or preceding them.  Here's a great example, in which the asterisks are sparkling stars in a cloudy sky, from The Will-o'-the-Wisp by Marie Petersen, 1874.