"Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects - hardly recognizable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles - made of glass, of clay, of discolored bronze and other time-blurred substances.

'It seems cruel,' she said, 'that after a while nothing matters...any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labelled 'Use unknown.'"

--Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence