Judge, 1918-08-10 · page 10 of 32
Judge — August 10, 1918 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis: "The Fulfillment of a Hunch" This page presents a short story by Charles Alden Byrnes illustrated with two cartoons by different artists. **The Story:** A writer experiences an inexplicable premonition throughout the day—sensing a woman's presence, hearing footsteps, feeling watched. He dismisses belief in intuition and telepathy as superstitious, yet the feeling persists and terrifies him. His "hunch" is fulfilled when his landlady arrives demanding overdue rent and refusing negotiation. He must move without his trunk. **The Satire:** The piece gently mocks masculine rationality and skepticism about "women's intuition." The narrator's smugness about not believing in telepathy or thought-transference contrasts with his actual experience of genuine premonition—suggesting such intuitions have practical validity despite scientific dismissal. **The Cartoons:** "The Harmoniac" (top) shows a mystical female figure. "Ambition" (bottom) depicts a small dog watching a man in a hat lying prone on the ground—likely illustrating the gap between ambition and reality, complementing the story's theme of unfulfilled expectations.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Fulfillment of a Hunch By Cuarces Acasa Byers HAVE never studied mysticism. I I know very little about so- called telepathy, or thought- transference. I have often listened to women talking of intuition, and so forth, but in doing so I have always smiled cynically and tried to simulate superiority. Yet—— All day to-day, as I sat writing, I have been haunted a most foreboding feeling. Often I have caught self stopped in my work and sitting absently staring into space. At times this feeling, that something unde- sirable impended, was almost unbearable. With my mind temporarily forced to the task before me and my pencil moving rapidly across the page of white paper, there suddenly, time and time again, has broken through from my subconsciousness to my consciousness this troublesome thought-apparition. It has haunted me so persistently as to become quite terrifying. And it has been always a woman in the act of invading her presence Drawen by Tex O'Rourke Tue Harmontac upon me into which this haunting something visualized itself. Some- times I have imagined that I could hear her footsteps on the stair- Sometimes her face seemed to float dimly, indistinctly about me, just a little outside the range of actual vision; and at still other times I have been prompted into actually turning quickly around in my chair, with that strange feeling that a pair of cyes centered pene- tratively upon the back of my head. I presume there are some who would coolly analyze the feeling into a “hunch,” and let it go at that. But with me it has been truly maddening. : And now On the stairway I actually do hear footsteps. I know, for I have pinched myself, that I might be certain that I am not again merely fooled by my subconscious self. The door opens, and a woman enters. It is just as I had feared and expected. The landlady wants her overdue rent and refuses to listen to reason—or argu- ment. The “hunch” is fulfilled, and I must move— without my trunk. AMBITION comicbooks.com