A dream –
Going to McKinley Ave. School (Salem) with Catherine & Arthur (though I was as I am now, I thought I was re-experiencing with them my own early days at this school). It is the noon hour and we have come out to go home for lunch. I will show them a short cut from E. Green St. to High Street – We enter a dense woods, through which wind several narrow roads, outlets for the homes of millionaires who have marred the former solitude of the woods – about midway we come to a bank sloping away from us, down which we caper joyously. It is covered with rich deep moss, which is broken by yellow-flowered [jewelweed]. At the end of it, our way is bared by a rocky glen with steep rocky walls over which is tumbling water, from melting snow.
We retrace our way, trying to discover a passage to High St. We come upon a lane at last, that clearly leads to that street, over a bridge, but our way is barred by one of the rich house-owners and his man (who is tall and clad in a uniform-dark green). In spite of our entreaty, they force us to go back to Green St. I awoke then.
Charles E. Burchfield, February 27, 1940