I instantly felt as if I had stumbled into a wrong apartment in which someone was dressing. And yet I had merely glanced across the aisle of a train at a man I had never seen before, who looked back at me. I had an unreasonable feeling that there must be something I could do for him. It was almost as if he had spoken. And yet I met his gazed for only a moment or two and then we both turned away. It happened a long time ago -- four or five years -- and it is as meaningless to my life as an old forgotten telephone number; but there it is , as sharp as any memory I have of a friend. It comes up before me clear, irrelevant, and uncalled for, at unexpected hours. . .
There is something lugubrious about the expression of a man with a toothache. I think I could always pick out such a sufferer instantly: a man with a toothache looks, crazily enough, as if he were trying not to laugh. But this was not a look of physical pain. I felt, for some odd reason, as if the cause for it were on the tip of my mind; as if, by some little extra effort, I could divine the dark experience, whatever it was.
That is about a sixth or seventh of the entire short story. And we expect, as we go along, to the reveal that the man has suffered some insignificant foible for which Thurber is famed for framing as a catastrophe.
But this story, with its buildup and closing line, rivals the famed "saddest" story ever written, atrributed to Hemingway but first appearing in print when Hemingway was only seven years old.
I wonder at the story's origin. Is it typical Thurber fiction, but going in a different direction than we usually assign to Thurber, or is this a bit of reportage, something he experienced himself in reality and wrote down so as not to forget it. I don't know what the answer is.
You can listen to the whole story here. (Narration is, uh, not professional by any means.)
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