Charles E. Burchfield, Journals, August 14, 1935

 It is agonizing to be in a season like this and be limited in what one can absorb and express of it. How to expand to increase one’s faculties, to be a dozen minds, and have a hundred hands!

I look at the old house in my sketch “Bearded Hills,” and I think: “Up such a lane could I go up to the house, and into the dining room, where would be at the table, my aunt Em, and my mother, and uncles, and all the rest of my family; much pleasant talk would be going on; a feeling of family security and well-being - suddenly all vanishes, the house is quiet and dark. Outside, the phosphorescent-like glow of the bleached-out grass glows vaguely beyond the black locusts - the insect chorus is throbbing full and strong – the feeling of death and isolation is frightful.