Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, October 3, 1920

The church bells sound tonight as they did in childhood.

A vast lonely evening, with a tremendous overpowering melancholy; the child has vague remembrances 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 came 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 and larger; the sky is about to fall he is facing a vast valley –

Charles E. Burchfield, October 3, 1920