The words are the actual 1905/06 captions. I’ve copied words into the blog to make them more legible.

“I’ve noticed, Miss, when you ‘as a motor car, you catches ‘a train,’ not ‘the train.'”

“The Triumph of Rush,” as Punch Almanack 1906 saw it: a future in which the police can arrest you for failing to go at least 150 miles per hour, bedeviled, according to original cartoon, by the gremlins of “Dust, Smell, Jarred Nerves and Insanity.” (Those high speed trains are a pretty good forecast, aren’t they?)

Q: “Is Mr. Forbes in?” A: “No, Sir.”

Q: “Is he on the telephone?” (Have a phone?)

A: “I don’t know where he is, Sir.”

This one speaks for itself. I was aghast to see the constable using a Segway-like pair of motorized wheels, however. Those did not come to market until 2001, ninety-five years after this cartoon.

Sherlock Holmes and the Remaining Improbable

by Susanne M.Dutton, soon from Propertius Press*

The game is not afoot. The Better-Every-Day world of 1895 is gone, even hard to recall as WWI ends. Holmes fills out entry papers at a rundown psychiatric clinic on the Normandy coast. Now that the law declares his cocaine use illegal, he aims to quit entirely. Confronted by a question as to his “treatment goal,” he hesitates, aware that his real goal far exceeds the capacity of any clinic. Holmes’ scribbled response, never before encountered by his long-experienced doctor, soon churns interlocking mystery and desperate action into the lives of enemies and friends both.

* https://propertiuspress.wixsite.com/bookstore/online-store