Highgate Cemetery, London

"Why are you taking us to the cemetery, Professor?"

I recalled D.H. Lawrence saying: "I like to try new things so I can reject them."

"So you can see how the Victorians pictured their place in history," I said.

Ravens were sitting atop Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s tomb.

"They buried him with a little bell, in case he should wake up and need rescuing," I said.

"Karl Marx didn’t get a little bell, and you’ll notice there are no birds on his tomb." I said.

"George Eliot doesn’t have any birds either, and look, her tomb is sinking. That’s because they buried her with all her books." I said.

"How do you know her tomb is sinking if you can’t see?" asks a girl.

"Because I read the books," I said.

You could hear a day laborer spading up wet earth beside a fallen stone.

S.K.

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[andrea]

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