Gobolinks; or, Shadow Pictures for Young and Old

For Young and Old by Ruth McEnery Stuart And Albert Bigelow Paine
New York The Century Co. 1896 Copyright, 1896, by The Century Co.

Dear Friends of our youth, should you happen to look At the curious things in this curious book, And should you, with quizzical countenance, ask The how and the why of our curious task—
Now, some one has said, in a moment of spleen, We cannot make pictures of what we've not seen; But such an assertion deserves only scorn, For the shape of the Gobolink never was born. He comes like the marvelous mimes of our dreams, When one has been supping on salads and creams, And curious changes of vision take place— The horse may appear with an elephant face— The goat with a cane, and the goose with a hat— Six legs on the dog, and two tails on the cat; We never can tell, though we're sorely perplexed, What shape will be shown us, or what will come next; And these are the things that our Gobolinks do— Dear friends, and dear children, we give them to you.

Drop a little ink on a sheet of white paper. Fold the sheet in the center and press the ink-spots together with the fingers. All of the pictures in this book were made in this manner——none of them having been touched with a pen or brush.
A great deal of practice will only go to show that the Gobolink, as his name implies, is a veritable goblin of the ink-bottle, and the way he eludes the artist's design proves him a self-made eccentric creature of a superior imagination.
It is hardly to be expected that the animals and birds of prey referred to under more or less familiar names in the accompanying rhymes will be strikingly correct as to anatomy; and because, as upon page 15, the elephants, or whatever they may be, happen to have each a row of interesting tails continuing along the full length of the spinal column, no unkind criticism should be made upon the ability of the overworked and conscientious artists, who would have made fewer tails if they could, and have added nothing to the price of the book on account of undue liberality in the matter of caudal appendages.