The furniture was as simple as it could be, consisting of five or six long-backed ebony chairs, a table, a crucifix, a missal, and a human skull, not, as usual, nicely cleaned and polished, so as to take away all idea of corruption from the round, smooth, meaningless ball of shining bone, but rough and foul as it came from the earth, with the black dirt sticking in the hollows where once had shone the light of life, and the green mould of the grave spreading faint and sickly over the fleshless chaps.
— from One in a Thousand; or, The Days of Henri Quatre by G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford) James