In the midst of a large room, the sides of which were crowded with coffins, piled to the very ceiling, sat about a dozen personages, with pipes in their mouths, and flasks and glasses before them.

Their seats were coffins, and their table was a coffin set upon a bier.

Perched on a pyramid of coffins, gradually diminishing in size as the pile approached its apex, Chowles was waving a glass in one hand, and a bottle in the other, when the doctor made his appearance.
A more hideous personage cannot be imagined than the coffin-maker.

He was clothed in a suit of rusty black, which made his skeleton limbs look yet more lean and cadaverous.

His head was perfectly bald, and its yellow skin, divested of any artificial covering, glistened like polished ivory.