mena of personal
attraction--often called magnetism.

THE MAGIC OF MAGNETISM

Magnetism is surely one of the most enviable possessions of the
successful pianist. Just what magnetism is and how it comes to be, few
psychologists attempt to relate. We all have our theories, just why one
pianist who often blunders as readily as a Rubinstein, or who displays
his many shortcomings at every concert can invariably draw larger
audiences and arouse more applause than his confrere with weaker vital
forces, although he be admittedly a better technician, a more highly
educated gentleman and perhaps a more sensitive musician.

Charles Frohman, keenest of theatrical producers, attributed the actor's
success to "vitality," and in doing this he merely chose one of the
weaker synonyms of magnetism. Vitality in this sense does not imply
great bodily strength. It is rather soul-strength, mind-strength,
life-strength. Professor John D. Quackenbos, A.M., M.D., formerly of
Columbia University, essays the following definition of magnetism in his
excellent _Hypnotic Therapeutics_:

"Magnetism is nothing more than earnestness and sincerity,
coupled with insight, sympathy, patience and tact. These
essentials cannot be bought and cannot be taught. They are
'born by nature,' they are dyed with 'the red ripe of the
heart.'"

But Dr. Quackenbos is a physician and a philosopher. Had he been a
lexicographer he would have found the term magnetism far more inclusive.
He would at least have admitted the phenomenon which we have witnessed
so often when one possessed with volcanic vitality overwhelms a great
audience.

The old idea that magnetism is a kind of invisible form of intellectual
or psychic electricity has gone down the grotesque phrenological
vagaries of Gall as well as some of the pseudoscientific theories of
that very unusual man, Mesmer. We all possess what is known as
magnetism. Some have it in an unusual degree, as did Edwin Booth, Franz
Liszt, Phillips Brooks and Bismarck. It was surely neither the art nor
the ability of Daniel Webster that made his audiences accept some of his
fatuous platitudes as great utterances, nor was it the histrionic talent
alone of Richard Mansfield that enabled him to wring success from such
an obvious theatrical contraption as _Prince Karl_. Both Webster, with
his fathomless eyes and his ponderous voice, and Mansfield, with his
compelling personality, were exceptional examples