Charles Burchfield, Journals, October 3, 1920

The church bells sound tonight as they did in childhood.

A vast lonely evening, with tremendous overpowering melancholy; the child has vague rememberances of the terror of the Sunday School lesson of the morning in which fearful stress is put on the avenging wrath of God—

There is the unnatural constraint of Sunday over the town. For the time the child forgets where his mother is, there come to him unutterable forebodings of times when all protecting friends will be gone; the cricket chorus comes from black depths; the air opens up into a vast cavern, which the mournful bell swells larger & larger; the sky is about to fall—he is faciing a vast valley—

Charles Burchfield, October 3, 1920