The Quest for Health

"He [Samuel Johnson] told me [Fanny Burney] that he was going to try what sleeping out of town might do for him. 'I remember,' said he. 'that my wife, when she was near her end, poor woman, was also advised to sleep out of town; and when she was carried to the lodgings that had been prepared for her, she complained that the staircase was in very bad condition, for the plaster was beaten off the walls in many places. 'Oh,' said the man of the house, 'that's nothing but by the knocks against it of the coffins of the poor souls that have died in the lodgings!' He laughed, but not without apparent secret anguish, when telling me this."