ieu whom he would
personate.

From the brain of every spirit medium ascends a blazing sun, which burns
the brighter when the magnetic relations between it and the spirit world
are most perfect. This blazing light, this radiant effulgence, is
perceived instinctively, though not knowingly, by every individual who
listens to a discourse from a "trance medium." So from the brain of the
actor this glorious light throws out its rays into the assembly, and when
he becomes fully inspired, its magnetic influence is felt with
overpowering vividness; and the result is, the audience themselves are
set in motion, and from pit to gallery you hear vociferous applause.

There are actors who are good, and who acquire fame, who have never felt
this divine afilatus. The intellect of the audience appreciates them for
their declamation, for the art and artifice which they manifest; but the
humblest and most illiterate of that assembly know well that this studied
eloquence does not fire the brain.

But it will not do to trust blindly to spirit control; a knowledge and
constant study of human nature is necessary.

It is a well-known fact that a person steadily looking at one point will
influence twenty others to look at that point also, and to imagine they
see some object before them. Understanding this principle, you may work
upon each attribute in the minds of your audience. If fear is to be
aroused, do as your neighbor does as he hastily enters your house after
meeting with a fearful calamity. You become excited before even hearing
the evil which has befallen him. Every faculty can be acted upon in the
same manner--grief and joy alike.

Of the ventriloquial powers of the human voice, many speakers are
ignorant. The tyro on the stage wishing to make the remotest individual
in his audience hear, bawls at the top of his lungs. He is unaware that
the organs of the human voice are a kind of electrical machine, governed
by the will-power, and that the actor has merely to throw his will and
direct his mind to a given point, for his voice to reach that point and
produce a far more startling effect than the loudest blast that any pair
of lungs could bring forth. Thus the lowest whisper can be made to tell
at the farthest corner of the theatre.

But perhaps I have said enough of the methods best adapted to produce
representations of character on the stage. The question may arise in the
mind of the reader, whether there is any opportunity of ex