Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

They are a great part of my life.  At all times I become lost in either delightful, exalted imagining or horrible, fearful thoughts.  Before I go to sleep, after reading a book, in school while studying, I imagine all kinds of things.  So far these pastimes have taken me everywhere, all over the world. I have traveled all over Europe, and have made friends with people of every country; I have chatted with Kings and princes, with the President of the United States, and with many other noted people; I have transported myself back to ancient times and flaunted modern fashions before the awed people.  Often have I been a great general and saved the whole United States from oppression!  My imagination has carried me to the moon, where I saw strange people; it has enabled me to carry on intimate conversations with animals and flowers, and take deep sea expeditions as a diver or merely without a diver’s armor!  Fairies have given me wishes, and my first one was always, invariably, that there would be no wrong in the world – this wish I always made daily, in order to favor the fairy.  How many times I saved the “Nine!”  How many touchdowns I accomplished!  And how many times I have become a great author!  There is hardly anything that my imagination has not done for me.