Dances in the modern cemeteries were freely pictured, and another conception somehow shocked me more than all the rest—a scene in an unknown vault, where scores of the beasts crowded about one who held a well-known Boston guide-book and was evidently reading aloud. All were pointing to a certain passage, and every face seemed so distorted with epileptic and reverberant laughter that I almost thought I heard the fiendish echoes. The title of the picture was, "Holmes, Lowell, and Longfellow Lie Buried in Mount Auburn".Now, the weird thing here (aside from the rather eerie reference to a dead "Holmes") is that when I first moved to Boston some years ago, the apartment in which I sub-let a room let on directly across the street to the maintenance/grounds entrance of the enormous, rambling Mount Auburn Cemetery, which I would explore sometimes on the weekends. Based on where the main Egyptian-style entrance is, they'll tell you that it's in Cambridge, but don't let that fool you -- most of the grounds are in Watertown (where my first job in gaming was).
2012-11-09
More Pickman's Model
More weirdness as I compare the Holmes Basic D&D text to H.P. Lovecraft's Pickman's Model -- this one more personal and not a direct text connection; from the latter short story:
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ReplyDeletePerhaps not that eerie. The reference is most certainly to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. who is, in fact, buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. He is listed in the "H" section of the Wikipedia page you linked to as an author/physician. He was perhaps better known as a poet (as were James Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow).
ReplyDeleteThat's I good point, I didn't make that connection. Thanks!
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