and Valma had not been made aware of his existence before. We drove through the streets of Providence and Don remarked that it was in the area which Lovecraft had used in his work. I could not relate the streets and houses that I had read about in that novel with the rather delightful looking houses we drove past, though the sun was out which might have been something. Don & Shiela knew a lot more about Lovecraft than I would have imagined natural and they told us a little of it as we went along. We arrived at the cemetery and apart from the various marble monuments I could have easily mistaken it for a park, which probably tells you a lot about the cemeteries I'm used to. There were trees and lawn everywhere, we drove around for a while and at first we couldn't find what we had come to see. Nei,ther Valma nor I minded very much, apart from the fact that I don't like cemeteries very much it was a pleasant ride. Then they figured out where they were and the car stopped. We got out and walked over to a monument sticking up from the ground, a rather simple stone and marble affair so that it was no wonder we might have missed it earlier. The monument did not mark one grave but quite a few, the sites of various graves which were located around it. The graves themselves were just lawn and as we read the inscriptions we realized that we were standing on Lovecraft even as we read his name. After a moment or two of contemplation we wandered about Iooking at other graves and crypts. I'd never seen a crypt before and only seen their immitations in various horror films and read about them in books. Some of them were quite simple and much as I'd imagined a real one might be. Others were massive, in particular one quite near Lovecraft which was a large circular construction set into a slight hill, the space on top would easily be large enough for a tennis court and the thought oŁ what might be found behind the locked door were very Lovecraftian thoughts. That cemetery would have obviously flavoured Lovecrafts' thoughts, any horror stories I might write based on my impressions of the Dimboola cemetery would be very different. We drove to another part of the cemetery and stopped again, not this time to look at the final resting place of this or that person but to Iook at the view. The cemetery was set on the side of an inlet from the Atlantic Ocean and from the spot where we were the view down the steep hill to the water was very pleasing. We bowed as we passed under a couple of low branches and found ourself in a quiet clearing with a beautiful view. Don remarked that it would be the ideal spot for a picnic but that the people there might not appreciate it very much. To one side was a small.1 monument giving the names and the dates of the people who were buried there. The spot was so tranquil that it almost seemed worth dying to be buried there. The place seemed to be too good to be wasted on the dead but then I suppose that if it were open to the living it would be ruined and not half as much worth visiting. From the top of the Empire State building I had caught a glimpse of the Atlantic, but no more. Providence is set in from the ocean but Don said that technically the inlet from the ocean would qualify. So we drove to a place called Indian point which was the closest and easiest place to get to the water. When we arrived we found that the place was parked out and when we saw the laxge sailing boat we realised why. They remembered then that they had heard somethlng about a training schooner calling in and obviously a lot of interested people were there to see it. After a while we found a place to park and went to look at the boat and the water - the boat was a fine thing, what with its rigging and its masts, the water was not so fine with all sorts of junk floating in it. There was no beach as such, most of the land was fenced so that access to the water was impossible but by clambering down a steep bank of rocks I was able to dip me hand fnto the water. Most of the land around was built up and it didn't seem much like the Atlantic but the water was salty so I suppose that counts for something. On our way back to Don & Shiela's we drove around some interesting parts of Providence which is a nice looking city. On one street they have collected as many oId houses as they can. We drove past them slowly catching the occasiotal date. I must have an exaggerated idea of how old things should be before they are really ancient (or I must have forgotten that even New England isn't all that old) because I was disappolnted that most of the houses were dated around