A prerequisite to a physician's bedside manner is a love seat manner.  From Social England Under the Regency by John Ashton (1890).  The caption reads: "A Physician."

An illustration from Past, Present and Future by James E. White (1909).

See Jonathan Allen's A Bad Case of Animal Nonsense.

"Imaginary Companions": an illustration from Echoes from the Rocky Mountains by John Clampitt (1889).

"The Real Music of the Future": an illustration from an 1888 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "Signor Fohhorni, the Great Hibernian Basso-Tenore Robusto-Profondo, is so disgusted at the frivolity of contemporary musical taste (which is not ripe enough to appreciate him), that he gives up all attempts to please the present generation: he buys a phonograph instead, and devotes his energies to singing for posterity.  By applying his ear to this marvellous instrument immediately after signing into it, he not only hears his song echoed back to him out of the dim future, but he also hears the rapturous applause of Unborn Millions!"

The ghost of the king's daughter, from Comic History of Greece from the Earliest Times to the Death of Alexander the Great by Charles Snyder (1898).

An illustration from an 1867 issue of Punch magazine.

"Nonsense is, technically, done a disservice by its own name.  After all, nonsense is so much more than the absence or even antithesis of sense. It is the presence of superlative silliness!  That said, I love the word 'nonsense' in its own right, and wouldn't want to see it changed." —literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

"Watching the skittle players," from In the Ardennes by Katharine Sarah Macquoid, 1881.

"The Reciter's Motto": an illustration from The Aldine Reciter by Alfred Henry Miles (1888).

An illustration from an 1885 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

"Nobody, of course, who enjoyed the pleasure of intimacy with him, expected him to talk anything but nonsense, but he need not, she felt, have descended to such utter nonsense, as that of which he had been guilty last night." —P. G. Wodehouse, Spring Fever, via Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

An illustration from Spa Histoire et Bibliographie by Albin Body (1888).

This is the best "foodstuffs with humanoid legs" item we've seen all week + n.  The stout and the bread are musicians (why not the rum?  Well, reggae traces back only to the 1960s), while Sir Loin sits out the dance and reads a paper.  We do note one inaccuracy -- the butter in the U.K. is much bigger than that.  Note the one foodstuff that costs 3 d/2 -- is it perchance mutton dressed in lamb prices?  From The Dawn of the XIXth Century in England, 1886.

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them? The ten-letter word may take some time to unscramble.

• 7-letter words: 15
• 8-letter words: 8
• 10-letter words: 1

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

Dostoyevsky on nonsense, from Crime and Punishment:

Do you suppose I’m going on like this because they talk nonsense? Rubbish! I like it when they talk nonsense! Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It’s by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I’m human. Not one single truth has ever been arrived at without people first having talked a dozen reams of nonsense, even ten dozen reams of it, and that’s an honourable thing in its own way; well, but we can’t even talk nonsense with our own brains! Talk nonsense to me, by all means, but do it with your own brain, and I shall love you for it. To talk nonsense in one’s own way is almost better than to talk a truth that’s someone else’s; in the first instance you behave like a human being, while in the second you are merely being a parrot! The truth won’t go away, but life can be knocked on the head and done in. I can think of some examples. Well, and what’s our position now? We’re all of us, every one of us without exception, when it comes to the fields of learning, development, thought, invention, ideals, ambition, liberalism, reason, experience, and every, every, every other field you can think of, in the very lowest preparatory form of the gymnasium! We’ve got accustomed to making do with other people’s intelligence — we’re soaked in it! It’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t what I’m saying true?

You've heard of whistling the face of adversity, but here's what to do in an encounter with cannibals, from Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years' Travels in Australia by Carl Lumholtz (1889).

An illustration from an 1893 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "Out of the darkness behind her was slowly growing a human face."

An illustration from an 1881 issue of Cornhill magazine.  The caption reads: "They always fly at me, and nobody else."

"Of course that was complete and utter nonsense, but still . . . when he looked at her like that, well, it made utter nonsense seem a lot less . . . nonsensical." —Donna Kauffman, The Great Scot

Someone should write a book entitled Finesse, and a Parachute.

An illustration from an 1889 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

The majestic front of eternity has vanished and left only ephemeral time (to paraphrase James Henry Snowden).

This one is from Punch, 1889.

"I'll thank you not to talk utter nonsense," she said.  So I stopped talking utter nonsense... but later on, after I'd gone home, I realized she never thanked me.  Cheated out of nonsense, again!  —Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

An illustration from Premiers Voyages Au Pays Des Glaces by Charles Baye (1888).

   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(   ,(
`-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `-'  `

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them?

• 7-letter words: 9
• 8-letter words: 3

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

"The Process of Wakenin": an illustration from Legal and other Lyrics by George Outram, illustrated by William Ralston (1887).

"Driven Mad by Birds": an illustration from an 1887 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

"Thanks to the Thunder": an illustration from an 1865 issue of Cornhill magazine.

An illustration from Illustrated British Ballads: Old and New by George Barnett Smith (1886).  The caption reads: "Bar the door! Put out the light, for it gleams across the night."

An illustration from an 1884 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "Again she was writing a letter which involved a giving up."

This puzzle grid contains several big words. Can you find them? The 9-letter word is most mysterious.

• 7-letter words: 17
• 8-letter words: 6
• 9-letter words: 1

All letters in the word must touch (in any direction), and no square may be reused.

Click to display solutions

An illustration from an 1888 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

Like a stopped clock, she was correct twice a day.  (The caption reads, "She stopped, like a clock.")  This bit of time suspension is from Cornhill, 1875.

In French, the equivalent expression to "If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times" is "Si je l'ai dit une fois, je l'ai dit trente-six fois." Can you prove that the two numbers are indeed equivalent?Answer: Thirty-six and one thousand are equivalent for very small values of one thousand and very large values of thirty-six. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)

Thirty-six times! What moderate hyperbole! In some cases, it might even be an underestimate.

"It bears repeating that most of the standards in the Great American Songbook started life in some musical or revue."

An illustration from an 1875 issue of Wide World magazine.  The caption reads: "Light-heart, dissolving."

There are places lower than the orchestra pit.  From Danmarks Riges Historie by Johannes Christoffer Hagemann Reinhardt Steenstrup (1897).

An illustration from an 1883 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.

It's "funny only if it arouses anxiety and at the same time relieves it."
—Vera M. Robinson, Humor and the Health Professions (1991)

An illustration from Peaks and Pines: Another Norway Book by James Arthur Lees (1899).  The caption reads: "Vanished like pale phantoms in the whirling clouds."

An illustration from a 1914 issue of Saturday Evening Post magazine.

"But then perhaps it's true for all of us; if the paradox is that it's our hopes and aspirations which imprison us, then maybe in the end we're all women." —People Like Us, series 2

A person disguised as a Christmas-type tree, from Die Deutschen Kolonieen by Carl Hessler (1889).  The caption reads: "Dud=Dud."

"The surprising truth is that bleaching, coloring, or even perming your hair will not increase your risk of hair loss." —Colette Bouchez, Your Perfectly Pampered Menopause

An illustration from Echoes from the Rocky Mountains by John Clampitt (1889).

An illustration from an 1870 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "In the face of the wind I fought my way."

"It's St. Dennis, the patron saint of clip show hosts.  St. Dennis protects against any damage befalling your clips show." —Harry Hill's exquisitely funny TV Burp

"Confusion": an illustration from an 1885 issue of Frank Leslie's Pleasant Hours magazine.  The dialogue reads:

Threading glass beads by candlelight reveals the (archaic, chiefly literary) rarefied substance that permeates all space, the [a]ether.  Our illustration appears in The Quiver, 1895.

An illustration by Hugh Thomson for Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen (1897).  The caption reads: "He attended to her large, fat sighings."

Here's a precursor to Augusten Burroughs' memoir Running with Scissors.  The caption reads: "Advancing absently, scissors in hand" (The Quiver, 1894).

"Watch this spot!"  A precursor to the animated gif craze (requiring low-tech imagination), from The Mystery of June 13th by Melvin Linwood Severy (1905).

Here's an 1887 precursor to Batman's villain The Human Magnet (1952), from Zwischen Donau und Kaukasus by Amand von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld.

An illustration from an 1844 issue of Punch magazine.  The items named include: "Moon, clouds, smoke, skeleton hunt in the air, blue fire, rocks, red fire, lightning, infernal regions, snakes, his hat, his feather, his rifle, birds of prey, monsters, goblins, imps, reptiles, Zamiel, alligator, the ghost, the owl, skeleton, stump of tree, witch, wolf, toad, skulls, grate, 7th bullet, lizard, boa, bear, and frog."

The context for this illustration is rather lovely.  A Jewish mystic fixes a precious opal in a frame "not unlike that of a looking glass," hangs it on a silk thread attached to the ceiling, and then opens a window to allow in a stream of sunlight.  "It was never known what the old Jew said, but he whispered to the stone just as if it could hear, and then said to his son, 'Thou seest that that crystal focuses the light from heaven, and thou seest that the focus is at the end of this silken thread.  Now, this precious opal will go forth in search of truth, and it will tell thee whether this marriage, if it be undertaken, will be for thy good or not.  Thou must sit with closed eyes at the other side from the crystal; the rays from the sun will fall direct upon the gem when it is at rest; then when I tell thee to open thine eyes, mark well the colour thou first seest, and, according to that, we will settle how this matter is to be.'"  The mystic then swings the gem to and fro, like a pendulum, then leaves it to itself.  "Gradually its oscillations became less and less, until at last, just as he was getting somewhat impatient, the young man heard a quick, sharp word, 'Look!' and he opened his eyes and fixed them upon the stone.  A blue blaze of fire met his eye, blue as the heavens, bright as the sun in those heavens."  Yellow would have indicated gold.  Red would have been danger.  Blue meant: "Prize above all its heavenly hue; It guides to what is just and true."  (The Quiver, 1889, p. 871.)

Merriam-Webster suggests that the first known use of slumgullion (a meat stew reminiscent of the slime [slum] from a cesspool [gullion]) was 1890.  We can do better than that, with this one from 1872, in Mark Twain's Roughing It.

It's been said that war is not a comfortable subject, General Pillow notwithstanding.  From The History of Mexico and Its Wars by John Frost, 1882.  [For The Silly Pillows.]

Inspired by the caption of this illustration from The Quiver, 1878, here's an alternative to the phrase, "As I live and breathe!": "As I stand and read!"

Here's a precursor to the Energizer Bunny.  The caption reads, "A walking battery."  From Roughing It by Mark Twain.

Though we don't exactly sit on a coffin waiting for someone to support our creative endeavors, we actually have on more than one occasion sensed the earth yawning beneath our feet.

Hegel's "bovine darkness"* is depicted in The Quiver, 1875. The caption reads, "Everything seemed to grow dark about him."

*Compare to Schelling's Indifferenzpunkt, the night in which all cows are black.

An illustration from Na úsvitě nové doby by Josef Jakub Touzimsky (1898).  Speaking of which, what exactly are a snowball's chances in hell?  See A Snowball's Chance in Hell.

"The Haunted House": an illustration from The Leisure Hour (1881).  The poem reads:

"Cod [with a C] is love": note that in this unretouched image from The Quiver, 1875, it's a large marine fish with a small barbel on the chin that is love.

David Watmough explains: "COD IS LOVE seemed more germane ... as a source to pray to than obeisance to some remote and distinctly unfishy deity" (The Moor is Dark Beneath the Moon, 2002).

Originally, the E of e-mail stood for eagle. From What Was the Gunpowder Plot by John Gerard (1897).  The caption reads: "The gallant Eagle, soaring up on high."

An illustration from The Oxford Thackeray.  The caption reads: "Without his hat. ... In his comic hat."

An illustration from an 1879 issue of The Quiver magazine.  The caption reads: "And then the mystic tide between us rolls."

An illustration from a 1904 issue of Wide World magazine.  The caption reads: "He saw by the corner of the tomb the flaming head of a 'Bhut.'"

This "old-fashioned break-down," from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (1883), predates by three years Sigmund Freud's private practice specializing in nervous disorders.

"More wind than is pleasant": an illustration from The Oxford Thackeray.

Here's a precursor to Ayn Rand, from The Quiver, 1875.  The caption reads, "I really cannot take upon myself the burden of your support."

Although fables do not have to contain animals, animals are repositories of fables.  Also, did you know that a swan song can be a story told to a swan?  From Little Loving Hearts Poem Book by Margaret Elenora Tupper, 1882.  The caption reads, "Come and tell me your story."

Q: What are the wild waves saying?
A: Go back, go back, go back.  (The Leisure Hour, 1873.)

Here's a precursor to the dual suns of Star Wars' Tatooine, from Object Lessons in Geography for Standards I, II, & III by Thomas Francis George Dexter (1899).