Seeking cleaner country air to restore his failing health, the poet Abraham Cowley retired from London to an old manor house on the Thames. On his first tour of the property, he noticed deep, gouged scrapes in the plaster and woodwork right at the sharp turn at the head of the main staircase. When he asked the housekeeper what had caused the damage, she matter-of-factly replied that the landing was too narrow, so the coffins of the previous occupants always scraped the wall on their way down.
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