One may feign that these storage warehouses are cities, but they are really cemeteries: sad columbaria on whose shelves are stowed exanimate things once so intimately of their owners' lives that it is with the sense of looking at pieces and bits of one's dead self that one revisits them.
"Short Stories and Essays From "Literature and Life""
William Dean Howells
They had missed by an event or two the more patriotic attraction of "Miss Darlings, the American Star," as she was billed in English, but they were in time for one of those equestrian performances which leave the spectator almost exanimate from their prolixity, and the pantomimic piece which closed the evening.
"Their Silver Wedding Journey"
William Dean Howells
Had it been downright misery she would have looked about her with less of her exanimate glassiness.
"The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of George Meredith"
George Meredith