Charles E. Burchfield (1893-1967)

June 17, 1926—

On the Niagara Street car this morning, I sat across from three people as strange as beings picked out of some obscure tortured dream. One of them, a man, preceded me on the car at Niagara Square assisted by a policeman. He carried a cane and walked with some difficulty. When he sat down I noticed that there was something the matter with his eyes; he seemed to have no control over their movement – they were constantly rolling around, mostly upward, so that only half of the pupils (that were void of any expression were only half visible. This gave him the appearance of being in acute mental anguish that sent a thrill of horror thru me. I could not tell whether he were blind or not, and felt I was rather common in the way I stared at him, but I could not keep my eyes off of him. The rest of his appearance was not so unusual – short rather stout body, fat red hands, dirty sand-colored suit and a coarse face that bristled with short hairs; it was his eyes that were horrible.
I did not at once notice the woman on his left, but when I did, she gave me a greater shock than the man, and at this distance she leaves a stronger impression. The first thing I noticed about her was her intensely black mustache and then rapidly I took in one peculiar feature after another in a series of intense shocks of discovery.

June 17, 1926

She was thin & gaunt, dressed in a faded black skirt that hung loose on the floor and a coat that fitted in snug at the waist & blumed (sic) out in sleeves that had big puffs at the shoulders, & very narrow at the wrists. She had big black eyes that stuck out of their sockets