Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

gloom.; He inquired about my sketching. I told him I would make sketches painting of the sketches I made. “Oh I see” he said “you get the dimension of all the damned hills, so that you’ll know where every ---- thing is in the whole bloody country”. Next he pointed out a hill which was tunneled to get to a opal mine in another hill beyond. But now he came back to the subject of sex. “There was a Japanese girl in {?} ----“ and then he went on to describe relate indescribably grotesque & hideous adventures; tales which took on a more lurid appearance character, interrupted as they were now by the rumbling of big iron freight cars, between which gleamed the river lights from Virginia, or the piercing wail of some freight, which echoed & re-echoed endlessly from one black hill to another. Quite frequently he interrupted himself to assert that he must start back to Toronto, but he walked on, compelled by a fierce on Terrible need to talk; to keep his mind off of himself. Finally the approach of a negro caused him to shake hands with me stop. Here was an opportunity for a companion back to town. He shook