self to be the person.  That is the first step towards mediumship; for it is one degree from the natural, towards the superior state.  Usually, through ignorance, the student proceeds no further than this point; and the spirit assistants can only partially aid him.  But an actor possessing the knowledge of placing himself en rapport with these characters, whether traditional or real, is immediately cut loose from his surroundings and becomes the Richard or Richelieu 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 exercising the talent of acting in the spirit world, supposing that talent to have been cultivated in this.