I may buckle down and just finish it tomorrow.
But when he began to offer careful amends, Thurber waved the comment off. “Anyone else, I’d think they did it on purpose. But you wouldn’t stoop to lie. So, no tenements or jails for you?”
“I stopped at a few,” Richard admitted, “and found the liveliest awfulness inside them; but they did not do what I hoped. Each grotesque tableaux found inside could be easily traced back to mundane cruelties. Worse, they were all so petty and simple to comprehend. I need horrors worth opening my sketchbook for!”
Thurber considered this. “You didn’t serve, did you?” he asked after a moment.
“What, in the War?” Richard shook his head. “I was called up, only to be struck down with the Spanish flu. But I hear that there was Hell enough in the trenches for any number of devils.”
“Yeah,” agreed Thurber. “And you can still see some of the poor fellows who half-drowned in the flames. If you know where to look.”