"Here's looking at you kid!"

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 9 Oct 2011

A carved skull on a gravestone in the North Leith Burial Ground seems to be saying, "You're next!". "Man's life is a swift thing; not only a passing but a flying vanity. Have you not observed how swiftly a shadow hath run along the ground in a cloudy and windy day, suddenly darkening the places beautiful before with the beams of the sun, but as suddenly disappearing? Such is the life of man. (...) No wonder the grave opens its devouring mouth for us, as soon as the womb has cast us forth; and that the cradle be turned into a coffin, to receive the corrupt lump: For we are all, in a spiritual sense, dead-born, yea, and filthy, noisome, rank, and stinking, as a corrupt thing, as the world imports. -- Thomas Boston, Human Nature In Its Fourfold State, c.1720s

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