And again I say I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years.
These are the feelings of miserable, wretched youth.
Still more pitiable than the sand and barrenness and the poor
unnatural stream is the dry, warped cemetery where the dry,
warped people of Butte bury their dead friends. It is a source of
satisfaction to me to walk down to this cemetery and contemplate
it, and revel in its utter pitiableness.
“It is more pitiable than I and my sand and barrenness and my poor
unnatural stream,” I say over and over, and take my comfort.
Its condition is more forlorn than that of a woman young and alone.
It is unkempt. It is choked with dust and stones. The few scattered
blades of grass look rather ashamed to be seen growing there. A
great many of the headstones are of wood and are in a shameful
state of decay. Those that are of stone are still more shameful in
their hard brightness.
The dry, warped friends of the dry, warped people of Butte are
buried in this dusty, dreary, wind-havocked waste. They are left
here and forgotten.
The Devil must rejoice in this graveyard.
And I rejoice with the Devil.
It is something for me to contemplate that is more pitiable than
I and my sand and barrenness and my unnatural stream.