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Magnetism   Listen
noun
Magnetism  n.  
1.
The property, quality, or state, of being magnetic; the manifestation of the force in nature which is seen in a magnet. At one time it was believed to be separate from the electrical force, but it is now known to be intimately associated with electricity, as part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism.
2.
The science which treats of magnetic phenomena.
3.
Power of attraction; power to excite the feelings and to gain the affections. "By the magnetism of interest our affections are irresistibly attracted."
Animal magnetism, Same as hypnotism, at one time believe to be due to a force more or less analogous to magnetism, which, it was alleged, is produced in animal tissues, and passes from one body to another with or without actual contact. The existence of such a force, and its potentiality for the cure of disease, were asserted by Mesmer in 1775. His theories and methods were afterwards called mesmerism, a name which has been popularly applied to theories and claims not put forward by Mesmer himself. See Mesmerism, Biology, Od, Hypnotism.
Terrestrial magnetism, the magnetic force exerted by the earth, and recognized by its effect upon magnetized needles and bars.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Magnetism" Quotes from Famous Books



... humorous self-gratulation), he had personally stolen, and really, for my part, though I hope I would not have done it myself, I thought it no sin in him—such valuables being attracted by a natural magnetism towards such a man. He obeys, in stealing them, a higher law than he breaks. I should like to know precisely what portion of his rich and rare collection he has obtained in a similar manner. But far be it from me to speak unkindly or sneeringly of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... a person of delicate instinct. The repudiation which he had twice suffered by the better element of the Republican Party, seemed only to redouble his determination to be its candidate. He had much personal magnetism. Both in his methods and ideals, he represented perfectly the politicians who during the dozen years after Lincoln's death flourished at Washington, and at every State capitol in the Union. By the luck of a catching phrase applied to him by Robert G. Ingersoll, he stood before ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... cold wet night froze the blood in the veins of the aged man, his wolfskin bunda could not keep him warm enough, and, therefore, they placed close beside him two young peasant girls that his dilapidated organism might borrow warmth from their life-giving magnetism. ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... of the age, which scientists are intently engaged in solving, is the correlation of the leading forces already adverted to. Thus far light, heat, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, vital action, cohesion, etc., have been proved to be parts of one great whole. Now, since the especial characteristic of the great earth-core is heat, it comes directly into relationship with the forces mentioned. How then are ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers

... believe it, my boy," replied Mr. Middleton, entirely carried away by the powerful magnetism of Ishmael's eager, earnest, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... sufficed to adequately meet his desperate desire to escape his grief, if in a rather singular manner there had not come to him an intimation of the possibilities of some sort of communication with my mother through these very investigations in electricity and magnetism in ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

... swift. There was in it the thrill that might come from taming some wild creature that had never known control, and the gentleness that to any generous spirit such power would bring. These, with the magnetism of the girl's beauty and personality, and the influence of her environment, he had felt for a long time; but now richer chords were set vibrating in response to her great love, the struggle she had against its ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... has ever been able to say what electricity is, for instance. It isn't anything, as positively distinguished from heat or magnetism or life. Metaphysicians and theologians and biologists have tried to define life. They have failed, because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to define: there is no phenomenon of life that is not, to some degree, manifest ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... would have all the virtues of all the heroes; but he would lack all their defects and all their inadequacies. He would have the manners of a Chesterfield, the courage of a Winkelried, the imagination of a Dante, the eloquence of a Cicero, the wit of a Voltaire, the intuitions of a Shakespeare, the magnetism of a Napoleon, the patriotism of a Washington, the loyalty of a Bismarck, the humanity of a Lincoln, and a hundred other qualities, each the counterpart of some superlative quality, drawn from the historic figure that represented ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... would not even trouble to stare at the intruder. Yet he would seldom stop to finish his consommation, or he would bolt it. He would feel something in the air; he would know he was out of place. He would fidget a little, frown a little, and get up meekly, and slink into the street. Human magnetism is such a subtle force. And Madame Chanve didn't mind in the least; she preferred a bird in the hand to a brace in the bush. From half a dozen to a score of us dined at her long table every evening; as many more drank her appetisers in the ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... artistic circle of Ye Hutte is often added a not uncongenial element from the outside world, sometimes even from within the borders of Philistia. Story-tellers, moved by the subtile magnetism of the artistic creative faculty, whether of brush, chisel, or pen, come up sometimes from London, bringing with them an atmosphere of publishers' offices, of romance in high and low life, of professional gossip and criticism. Often a stalwart bicyclist rolls up from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... practical science—such as electricity, magnetism, and chemical cultivation of the soil—received a share of his attention. He predicted that three or four powerful electric lamps would yet light a whole city. He was also convinced of the feasibility of an electric cable to New York, and calculated ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... House of Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, "A.E.," poet, writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic's shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except Redmond whose name would have occurred to every ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... was to be tested and compared with the behaviour of a reliable mercurial barometer. Electrical conditions were to be examined; the presence of ozone tested; the vibration of a magnet was again to be resorted to to determine how far the magnetism of the earth might be affected by height. The solar spectrum was to be observed; air was to be collected at different heights for analysis; clouds, also upper currents, were to be reported on. Further observations were to be made on sound, on solar radiation, on the actinic ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... force seemed to have been acting upon the girl like magnetism, for tho the look of wild suffering had not left her face, she had raised herself and was staring into his burning eyes; then suddenly, with an effort that shook her frame she clenched her hands and gave a gasp for breath, and ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... the pianist won his point; but it took two hours before he would allow Zaremba, his remnant of a conscience once more deadened by the combined forces of Rubinstein's magnetism, covert threats, and ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... her, barbarically handsome. She felt the force, the magnetism of him. It called to her, compelled her....She could not ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... n, or a spring used instead of it. This closes an electric circuit, which passes around the magnet, thence going through the tuning fork by the binding screw, k, and thence by connections not shown in the cut back to the battery. In consequence of the magnetism thus excited, the arms of the tuning fork are attracted by the poles of the magnet, and forced to beat with increased amplitude. In a short time a constant amplitude of oscillation is reached, when the magnetic impulses are of equal influence ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various

... competent employers and employees. It is altogether likely that different conditions will be found to be ideal in different industries and probably in different units of the same industries. One man will maintain ideal conditions by the virtue of his own magnetism and forceful personality, tying his men to himself with the strong bonds of mutual admiration, mutual respect, mutual loyalty, and mutual love. Another will create ideal conditions principally by the magnificent exploits of his organization. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... Life Essence. How it affects the human aura. Health Aura. Physical Aura. Health Magnetism. Peculiar appearance of Prana Aura. How animals follow trails of Prana Aura particles. The tiny electric sparks, and vibratory movements. How one may perceive the vibrations of Prana Aura. Interesting experiments. Seeing Prana Aura ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... be true," he said, at last, reluctantly. "I don't think you possess great animal magnetism! Yours is a more elusive, more—how shall I put it?—an attraction more spirituelle. . . . To those it touches, worse luck, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... to these condotte, numerous were the adventurers who came to offer Cesare their swords; indeed he must have possessed much of that personal magnetism which is the prime equipment of every born leader, for he stirred men to the point of wild enthusiasm in those days, and inspired other than warriors to bear arms for him. We see men of letters, ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... could write Great Stuff that would charm a Bird out of a Tree, but he did not have the Tubes to enable him to Spout. When he got up to Talk, it was all he could do to hear himself. The Juries used to go to sleep on him. He needed a Megaphone. And he had about as much Personal Magnetism ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... privileges of the monarchy and aristocracy, he was blind of an incurable blindness with respect to the discernment of the breath of life contained in the febrile agitations of new Germany, which discharged from its revolutionary tripod sufficient magnetism and electricity between the tempests, similar to those which flash, and thunder, and fulminate, from the summits of all the Sinais of all histories, to inflame a higher soul in any other more progressive society. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... the warm friend of all the family, and on the most familiar footing with them. As she was a woman of strong personal magnetism, and knew just how to win Alida's confidence, it was not long before her judicious questions had drawn out the reason of the girl's grief. After Alida had finished her recital of the conversation at the dentist's, there was a ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston

... its movements, so far as is known, can only be affected by natural running streams. The rod, or twig, does not work if carried over water passing through drains, culverts, and such like. My explanation of the movements of the rod is that they are caused by electro-magnetism, the diviner being perhaps highly charged with electricity. The water has absorbed the electricity of the adjacent bodies in the earth, the currents coming to the surface enters the air—ether—and the currents entering his body, he being a non-conductor, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... improvement, and fearlessly spoken the truth, without being attacked, defamed, and despised, or entirely misunderstood. Our age can show many proofs of this; for example, let us remember homoeopathy and magnetism. Clara Wieck was not appreciated in Leipzig until she had been admired in Paris; nor Marie Wieck, because she does not play exactly as her sister Clara does. The same is the case with my present book, which relentlessly ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck

... their magnetic method of curing. Then he declaimed against magnetism—"a heap of juggleries, whose effects came only ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert

... commonplace clerks from the stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest, his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from all ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... purify and enrich the understanding and imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more animated words. Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight. What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we transfer our human world thereto? Electro-magnetism can present or suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that endless world's universe, from milky way to milky way? An ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... study, and research in America, Europe, and Eastern lands, have resulted in the Magnetic Lung Protector, affording cure for Catarrh, a remedy which contains No Drugging of the System, and with the continuous stream of Magnetism permeating through the afflicted organs; MUST RESTORE THEM TO A HEALTHY ACTION. WE PLACE OUR PRICE for this Appliance at less than one-twentieth of the price asked by others for remedies upon which you take ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... read. Now, it appeared, that simple process was no longer adequate. People had tired of familiar "subjects"; it was the fashion to be interested in things that one hadn't always known about—natural selection, animal magnetism, sociology and comparative folk-lore; while, in literature, the demand had become equally difficult to meet, since Matthew Arnold had introduced the habit of studying the "influence" of one author on another. She had tried lecturing on ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... a bluff, hearty man, with the personal magnetism which goes with the making of a successful physician. He had mounted the stairs quietly but rapidly, evidently ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... was the fashion to ridicule the idea of "love at first sight;" but those who think, not less than those who feel deeply, have always advocated its existence. Modern discoveries, indeed, in what may be termed ethical magnetism or magnetoesthetics, render it probable that the most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy—in a word, that the brightest and most enduring of the psychal ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... that no one of the many pictures of Mr. Webster gives a true idea of what he was. We can readily believe this when we read the descriptions which have come down to us. That indefinable quality which we call personal magnetism, the power of impressing by one's personality every human being who comes near, was at its height in Mr. Webster. He never, for instance, punished his children, but when they did wrong he would send ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge

... Miss Hargrove was more truly his counterpart. She could supplement the weaknesses and defects of his character more successfully than Amy, and in a vague way he felt this. With all the former's vivacity there was much reserve strength and magnetism. She was unusually gifted with will power, and having once gained an influence over a person, she would have, as agents to maintain it, not only her beauty, but tact, keen insight and a very quick intelligence. Although ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... admiration. In a stable he would have looked like an image in a temple. In a hall he was the decoration. Whereever his body was, there, too, was his spirit, ready for the demands of the hour. He was singularly joyous and nicely tempered in speech with so much personal magnetism that he could mollify any enemy if he could only meet him face to face. His dress was always rich and appropriate. He was skilful in horsemanship, in archery, and in tennis, but his chief amusement was the chase. He liked to linger at the table and demanded good serving ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... a body without a soul. He haunted her. She lay on her couch and stared wide-eyed at vacancy. The sound of his voice still rang in her ears. She wondered now why the memory of it was so unpleasant to her. And then she thought she knew that it was because the magnetism of his eyes was missing. His body was a mere shell covering an intricate piece of machinery. She tried to think what it must be like to be actuated by a mind without a soul. She had pledged herself obedience ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... Although not even the smallest germ of the supernatural life is found in nature, yet the soul of man ceaselessly, if blindly, yearns after its possession. Once possessed, the life of God blends into our own, mingles with it and is one with it, impregnating it as magnetism does the iron of the lodestone, till the divine qualities, without suppressing nature, entirely possess it, and assert for it and over it the Divine individuality. "Now I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." An author much admired by Father Hecker thus describes the effects ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... fully understood," explained Brink, "but it will do a lot of things. For instance, it can change probability as magnetism can change temperature. You can establish a psi field in a suitable material, just as you can establish a magnetic field in steel or alnico. Now, if you spin a copper disk in a magnetic field, you get eddy currents. Keep it up, and the disk gets hot. If you're ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... competition trouble you? work away; what is your competitor but a man? Conquer your place in the world, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if they could have been induced to begin, would, in all probability, have ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... eyes there was bewildering depth; a sense of coldness that was positively benumbing, and which was reminiscent of the blue petrifying waters of the Ural Lakes; a magnetism that was paralysing, that held in complete obeisance both mind and limb, and was comparable to nothing so nearly as the hypnotic influence of the tiger or snake, but which differed from the latter inasmuch as its inspirations were just as delightful ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell

... Monroe's face, I was sufficiently imbued with Mr. Hamilton's ideas to feel no great confidence in the man. (Wherein I have since thought I did Mr. Monroe great injustice, since in every act of his life he has proved himself a high-minded gentleman. But Mr. Hamilton's personal magnetism was so great that it was quite impossible for us younger men at least, not to feel that every one who differed with him must be, if not wholly unprincipled, at least worthy of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... two years in Paris. He taught by personal magnetism. All he ever said was, "Continuez, mes enfants," and you had to make the best you could of that. He had a divine touch, and he knew something about colour. Kami used to dream colour; I swear he could never have seen the genuine article; but he evolved ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... demurred and protested against the charge. When Pickett asked him for the order to advance he turned away his head sorrowfully and would not speak. Then Pickett, that great leader of men, who was one half daring and one half magnetism and all hero, said proudly: "I shall go forward, sir." And turned ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris

... stage of civilization—as transcendent not in some of the virtues, but in them all—as never subject to prejudice, or the impulse of passion, never losing that perfect poise which it has been impossible for the greatest of men to achieve—as possessed of a mysterious magnetism which carried conviction to His hearers even when claiming to be one with the Infinite—as inspiring thousands with a love which has led them to give their ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... with him, gazed back into his kindled face. His magnetism lifted them. For humanity he had worked, should always work, and with him they understood that this was the greatest service. With him they rose on the wings of creative imagination. Desire ran deep in each small heart to do something ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... pale face; the shadowy eyes, wide and bright with an ecstatic determination, yet in them a certain feminine timorousness; the little pointed chin poked slightly forward; the red-brown hair—all untidy curls and tendrils, each hair seeming to have a life and magnetism of its own. It was just as he had so often pictured her in dreams ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... Aunt Betsy had been given her medicine and tucked away, the child climbed to her mamma's lap and coddled down to her. Instinctively she wanted the magnetism of touch to help her. And then, with her warm breath playing about her mamma's cheek, and her little hand nestling in hers, she told her what Squire had heard. Mrs. Marsden was not especially startled. She had suffered so much it seemed to her sometimes ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea

... a higher world of ethereal spiritual forms; and Swedenborg's beautiful doctrine of Correspondences is a reappearance of the same idea. If their theory be true, may not the antecedent type of that strange force which in the material world we call electricity be a spiritual magnetism. As yet, we know extremely little of the laws of electricity, and we know nothing of those laws of spiritual attraction and repulsion which are perhaps the cause of electricity. There may be subtile and as yet unexplained causes, connected with the state of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... not warm the imagination quite enough. He says, in speaking of the Carnival, "For my part, though I pretended to take no interest in the matter, I could have bandied confetti and nosegays as readily and riotously as any urchin there." These few words explain his magnetism. The decorous pretense of his observant calm could not make us forget the bursts of mirth and vigorous abandon which now and then revealed the flame of unstinted life in his heart. And I, watching constantly as I did, saw a riotous throw of the ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... Tacitus; Natural Philosophy, (Electricity, Optics, Magnetism, Galvanism); Astronomy, Chemistry, Mineralogy, and Geology; Compend of Political ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope

... mean. It did not at once become easier for Hugh to speak freely of what was passing in his own mind; indeed he realised that his father was one of those whose prejudices were so strong, and whose personal magnetism was so great, that not even his oldest and most intimate friends could afford to express opposition to him in matters on which he felt deeply. But Hugh saw that he must accept it as an unalterable condition of his father's ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... What makes it is the karma. What reincarnates is the karma,—the sum-total of the acts and thoughts of countless anterior existences,—each existences,—each one of which, as an integer in some great spiritual system of addition and subtraction, may affect all the rest. Like a magnetism, the karma is transmitted from form to form, from phenomenon to phenomenon, determining conditions by combinations. The ultimate mystery of the concentrative and creative effects of karma the Buddhist acknowledges to be inscrutable; but the cohesion of effects he ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... any of Tilley's speeches during the confederation campaign. No speaker that New Brunswick has ever produced has been more generally acceptable than was Tilley. His speeches were pointed, and so clear that they could not be misunderstood. He possessed, to a very large extent, that magnetism which enabled him to retain the attention and to awaken the sympathy of his audience. At all the meetings which he addressed, there were many who regarded themselves always as his friends and supporters and who formed a phalanx around him, giving him a confidence and political strength which ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay

... currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in print, consists entirely of polarised words. Borrow one of these from another language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its magnetism behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo mythology. Even a priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy Pundit would shut his ears and run away from you in horror, if you should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get the ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... then receiving day by day. Addressing the Senate he said: "I suppose what I shall say in this address will cost me many dear friends." A reporter said: "He hesitated as if choked with emotion at the thought of losing his friends." Then with the majesty of greatness and magnetism of manner he proceeded, saying: "I am charged with being ambitious. If I had listened to the soft whisperings of ambition I would have stood still, gazed upon the raging storm and let the ship of state drift on with ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... Magnetism and electricity, moreover, often cited by Mr Townshend, and undoubtedly the most surprising additions to human knowledge within the historical period, though abnormal, are not contradictory to experience—they were an entirely new series of facts added to our previous store—they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... hotel by the magnetism of the bicycle, are bound to see me ride whether or no, and in their quite natural ignorance of its character, they request me to perform in the small, roughly-paved court-yard of the hotel, and all sorts of impossible places. I shake my head in disapproval ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... sinking back on his shoulder, wrapped in his fur. She tried to resist him, but his arm was strong and encircled her, his hand clasped her own; it was supple and the wrist was like a hinge. There was a power, an electric force in his touch, a magnetism—she shut her eyes, yielding to it. She was like a violin after all; if he chose to play on her with his bow! ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs

... the struggling throng gathered to wish the boys the best of luck, "one thing certain, Sis, if anybody can bring Marshall's scalp home tonight it's Jack Winters. No one seems to just know how it comes, but there's a certain magnetism about that fellow that goes clean through the bunch. You know leaders like Napoleon and our own Teddy Roosevelt are born, not made. Jack is built on that plan. Other fellows who have made up their minds to dislike him, as I did at first, ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... it seemed possible that the two phenomena were simply associated. It is now, however, ascertained that light and heat are identical in their nature, and that a vast number of other phenomena— electricity, galvanism, magnetism, chemical action, and gravitation, as well as light and heat, are different manifestations of one and the same thing, which is called force or energy. In a great number of cases it is possible for us, by the use of appropriate means and apparatus, to transform these manifestations, ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... never made a failure. Absolute strangers told me facts about myself which not even my own wife knew: whether they spoke with the tongues of devils, or whether, by some unknown laws of magnetism, they simply read my thoughts, I am not even now prepared to say. I think if they had made a miss I should have been spared some suffering. Their communications had sometimes a ridiculous aimlessness, and occasionally a subtle deviltry coated about with religion, like a pill with sugar, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... thoroughly acquainted with chemistry, with astronomy, with terrestrial magnetism; and as the investigation of one subject leads to all others, for the reason that there is a mutual dependence and a necessary connection between all facts, so Humboldt became acquainted ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... forward with unconscious, queenly grace, looked for an instant into that face whose subtle power she already felt, her wondrous, starry eyes, luminous with a new, strange light, meeting his with their depth of meaning, their powerful magnetism, and from that brief instant, life for each was changed, wholly and completely; whether for good or ill, for weal or woe, neither as ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour

... whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... always being mixed with various proportions of carbon, silicon, sulphur, phosphorus, and other elements, making it more or less suitable for different purposes. Iron is magnetic to the extent that it is attracted by magnets, but it does not retain magnetism itself, as does steel. Iron forms, with other elements, many important combinations, such as its ...
— Oxy-Acetylene Welding and Cutting • Harold P. Manly

... was "orating" on the revival mesmerism was destined to make, and telling us how, like the Plumstead Peculiars, we should be able to do without doctors as soon as the healing powers of animal magnetism were properly recognised and diffused. I did not listen very carefully, I fear, for I was nervously looking about for Miss Chandos. Nervously, I say, because lady mediums and mesmerizers are so apt to run to eighteen stone, or be old ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... Iron Vessels, with a Short Treatise on Terrestrial Magnetism. By Fairman Rogers. New ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... think, to observe, to combine, to invent, and to obtain the greatest results with the smallest means. On the contrary, rags, mean huts, poverty, and inanition, are the inevitable lot of every nation which seeks and finds in iron, fire, wind, electricity, magnetism, the laws of chemistry and mechanics, in a word, in the powers of nature, an assistance to its natural powers. We might as well say with Rousseau—"Every man that thinks is a ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... been much lessened by the reformation of religion; and necromancy, astrology, chiromancy, witchcraft, and vampyrism, have vanished from all classes of society; though some are still so weak in the present enlightened times as to believe in the prodigies of animal magnetism, and of metallic tractors. What then is to be said of the prodigies of spontaneous vitality? To a system which removes the Author of all so far from our contemplation, we might well prefer ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... Uncle Phil." Perhaps he had pushed too hard. The dancing eyes veiled themselves a little and the intangible, indescribable magnetism somehow faded. Phil, looking at him, was suddenly able to see him and to think of him once more as Timmy, a boy with unusual qualities, but the same boy he had watched for years. He shook his head and felt somewhat bemused, as he had ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan

... position had undergone a change. Difficult to define it; to an ordinary bystander people would have seemed to welcome him cordially as ever. The gradations of respect in polite society are so exquisitely delicate, that it seems only by a sort of magnetism that one knows from day to day whether one has risen or declined. A man has lost high office, patronage, power, never perhaps to regain them. People don't turn their backs on him; their smiles are as gracious, their hands as flatteringly extended. But that man would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... once afar upon a mountain-top, E'en so, Savonarola, didst thou think, In thy most dire extremity, of me. And here I am! Courage! The horrid hounds Droop tail at sight of me and fawn away Innocuous. [The crowd does indeed seem to have fallen completely under the sway of LUC.'s magnetism, and is evidently convinced that it had been about to make an end of the monk.] Take thou, and wear henceforth, As a sure talisman 'gainst future perils, This little, little ring. [SAV. makes awkward ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm

... They are all as drunk as fools, and yet they pretend that it is I who am drunk. Very well! I defy you all; who among you wishes to argue with me? Will you discuss art, literature, politics, medicine, music, philosophy, archiology, jurisprudence, magnetism—" ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... us now, Roche. We must use that youngster to get at people. He must have some kind of personal magnetism. Did you notice how that fellow choked and sobbed when he told us how the youngster refused to leave him during the gale? A good sign that. We must have parties to meet him, and let him do the talkee-talkee lecturing business. I shouldn't ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... world, to the destruction of the apparently active properties of bodies in the material. It would be like the attempt to destroy (if it were in our competence to destroy) the expansive force of fixed air in nitre, or the power of steam, or of electricity, or of magnetism. These energies always existed in Nature, and they were always discernible. They seemed, some of them unserviceable, some noxious, some no better than a sport to children,—until contemplative ability, combining with practic skill, tamed their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... awaited him. And of the groups of power and rank about him, none seemed to fit that majestic council chamber so well as he. It was not the robe of costly stuffs he wore, nor the trappings of jewels, which if he moved never so slightly emitted a shower of frosty sparks—but a peculiar emanation of magnetism that at once repelled and attracted, and made him master over the monarch himself. He had never met repulse or defeat; he had never entered the presence of his peer; he had never loved, he had never prayed. He was a solitary power, who admitted ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... were saturated with a feeling of reality. He actually thought himself the mariner,—so I am persuaded,—while he was reading. As the poem proceeded, and we plunged deeper and deeper into its mystic horrors, the actual world receded into a dim, indefinable distance. The magnetism of this marvellous interpreter had caught up himself, and me with him, into Dreamland, from which we gently descended at the end of Part VI., and "the spell ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... ancient discipline, and he must needs try to please them and at the same time preserve the bond of union with the State Church,—the Lutheran,—of which, as his tenants, they were officially considered members. His tact and great personal magnetism at last healed the differences which had sprung up between the settlers, the opportune finding of Comenius' 'Ratio Disciplinae' enabled them with certainty to formulate rules that agreed with those of the ancient Unitas Fratrum, and a marked outpouring ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... altered the flow of the magnetic currents, which, in an imperceptible manner, influence the minds of men. Hitherto the stream of human life had directed itself to the westward, but when this reversal of magnetism occurred, a general desire arose to return to the east. And those whose business is theology have pointed out that the wickedness of those times surpassed understanding, and that a change and sweeping away of the human evil that had accumulated was necessary, and was effected ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... Saturday the 12th, about twelve at night, died Mr. Zachariah Williams, in his eighty-third year, after an illness of eight months, in full possession of his mental faculties. He has been long known to philosophers and seamen for his skill in magnetism, and his proposal to ascertain the longitude by a peculiar system of the variation of the compass. He was a man of industry indefatigable, of conversation inoffensive, patient of adversity and disease, eminently sober, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... joyful, sir, as you said, to see politicians, sectarians, philanthropists of all classes uniting in spontaneous sympathy for a cause pleaded by a stranger. I recognize in it the bounty of Providence. I see the truth revealed, that as magnetism pervades the universe, so there is a sentiment, which, independent of party affections and bubbling passion, pervades the breast of mankind; and that is, the love of Freedom, Justice, and Right. The chord of Freedom passes through all hearts, and whoever touches ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth

... this point. People did not pity him, nor did they dole out charity to him. They did not reverence him merely because he was a poet, a teacher, or a musician of note; they were drawn to him by strong personal ties — he had magnetism. The little informal notes that he wrote to them, or the longer letters he wrote in absence, or the conversations that he had with them, sometimes till far into the night, are cherished as among the most sacred memories of their ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... manners, had beating within him as big a heart as ever was planted in a human breast. His men knew that there was a power about him that fascinated them. They could not call it affection, but it was something akin to it: a strong magnetism, indeed, that inspired their confidence and caused them to follow him into dangers that resembled the very jaws of death. It was never a thought of his to show any tender feelings. His susceptibilities would have been much offended could he ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... knowledge ended two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, at which date, however, it would seem that civilisation had already touched a higher water-mark than it has ever since attained. Thus, this vanished people understood astronomy, natural magnetism, the force of gravity, steam, also electricity to some subtle use of which, I gathered, the lighting of their underground city was to be attributed. They had mastered architecture and the arts, as their buildings and statues showed; they could fly through the ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... over the heads of the gay audience, deep and dark as a thunder-cloud, which in a few moments changes a summer sky into heaviest gloom. Gradually an expression of intense interest and deep concern spread over the listeners; it was the magnetism of a strong mind, which held them for a time under the shadow of his own awful sense of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... moves to either right or left, depending on which half of the magnet is magnetized. If the back armature, D, of the magnet is removed the moving armature will work better, as this will prevent the magnetism from acting on ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... little surprise and comment. An exceptional degree of public interest as well as of purely private and personal regard has followed her almost, indeed, from childhood; partly due, it may be, to a certain indefinable magnetism of temperament which always makes the place where she chances to be at the time seem a social centre, and somewhat, too, from a life that has not been without its picturesque setting of scenery and circumstance. "Kate Field was started right,"—remarked Miss Frances ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... convulsionnaires and those wrought on the tomb of the deacon Paris in the cemetery Saint-Medard in 1730 and 1731, succeeded the extraordinary alleged cures of the German doctor Mesmer, who came to Paris in 1778 with his theory of "animal magnetism,"—theory treated with more respect by many of the savants of the present day than by those of the eighteenth century. The invention of the brothers Montgolfier, practically tested in 1783, awakened an extraordinary interest both ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton

... discerned only by their effects while their substance evades our senses, even when aided by so many mechanical means, the result will be the same as when Christopher Columbus detected that the earth is a sphere, and Galileo demonstrated its rotation. Our future will be unchanged. The wonders of animal magnetism, with which I have been familiar since 1820; the beautiful experiments of Gall, Lavater's successor; all the men who have studied mind as opticians have studied light—two not dissimilar things—point to a conclusion in favor of the mystics, the disciples of St. John, and of those great thinkers ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac

... [Rising.] Peter, I console myself with the thought that men have scoffed at the laws of gravitation, at vaccination, magnetism, daguerreotypes, steamboats, cars, telephones, wireless telegraphy and lighting by gas. [Showing feeling.] I'm very much disappointed that you ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco

... stroking her shining black hair, "but if you weren't, if you were as ugly as sin, it wouldn't make any difference, you'd get us all just the same. All women like you got to do is to look at a man and he'll follow you like a sheep. I don't know what it is, magnetism or something." ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... him the note-case which contained it. Is there a sort of moral magnetism in the tone of certain words and in certain expressions of countenance? Was it the nature of the oath which I had just taken, so deeply impressive at that moment, or had this man sufficient strength of mind to say to himself that his ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... presence of death! How to describe my feelings I know not; but, as we have all read and heard that, if the eyes of a watcher are steadily fixed on the countenance of a sleeper for a certain length of time, the slumberer will be sure to start up—wakened by the mysterious magnetism of a recondite principle of clairvoyance; so it was that, with shut eyes and drowsed-up senses, an inward ability was conferred upon me to detect the living from the presence of danger near me—to see, though sleep-blind, the formless shape of a mysterious horror crouching ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman

... shall hear the reason all the same, my professional. The reason is that it takes two men—real men—men of heart, blood and honor—to make a genuine combat. I could no more fight with you than I could make love to an ugly woman. You've no magnetism: you're not a man, you're ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw

... of the chintzes with which she helped the sunshine to brighten the low, panelled rooms. But Aunt Beatrice, girt with principles major and minor, armed with so Procrustean a measure for most of her acquaintance, accepted Mildred's deviations with an astonishing ease. The secret of personal magnetism is not yet discovered. It may be that the aura surrounding each of us is no mystic vision of the Neo-Buddhists, but a physical fact; that Mildred's personality acted by a power not moral but physical on the nerves of those who approached her, exciting those of some, of the majority, pleasurably, ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... true images of souls, which make him inimitable in our epoch and go back to Rembrandt's chiaroscuro." Colour went by the board at the last, and the painter was dominated by expression alone. His gamut of tones became contracted. "Physical magnetism" is exactly the phrase that illuminates his later methods. Often cavernous in tone, sooty in his blacks, he nevertheless contrives a fluid atmosphere, the shadows floating, the figure floating, that arrests instant attention. He became almost ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... public and private work; before an oration of Burke, before a victory of Napoleon, before a martyrdom of Sir Thomas More, of Sidney, of Marmaduke Robinson; before a French Reign of Terror, and a Salem hanging of witches; before a fanatic Revival and the Animal Magnetism in Paris, or in Providence. We assume that we under like influence should be alike affected, and should achieve the like; and we aim to master intellectually the steps and reach the same height or the same degradation that our ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... of all these faults, Elisha regretted that he had cast off his disciple, who was a great scholar in the law, especially as Gehazi abandoned himself to a sinful life after leaving the prophet. By means of magnetism he made the golden calves at Beth-el float in the air, and many were brought to believe in the divinity of these idols. Moreover, he engraved the great and awful Name of God in their mouth. Thus they were enabled to speak, and they gave forth ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... more perfunctory parson whom they liked better. As is the heartiness of the priest, so is the heartiness of the people—with such strictness that one is disposed almost to credit some of it to actual magnetism. Response is no empty word in ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... bird, and the magician his power to amuse the curious, to astonish the vulgar, and to confound the wisdom of the wise. Under that ordinance, our four millions of negroes are as unalterably bound to obey the white man's will, as the four satellites of Jupiter the superior magnetism of that planet. If individual masters, by releasing individual negroes from the power of their will, can not make them free or release them from subordination to the instinctive public sentiment ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... ever. But the "Catholic Revival," initiated under the leadership of Newman, Pusey, and Keble, has proved to be no transient disturbance: and no figure has in relation to the Church history of the half-century the same portentous importance as that of John Henry Newman, whose powerful magnetism, as it attracted or repelled, drew men towards Romanism or drove them towards Rationalism, his logical art, made more impressive by the noble eloquence with which he sometimes adorned it, seeming to leave those who came under ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... a little at the last words. Even veiled as she was, the vital magnetism of the man was creeping upon her already. She had resolved that she would see him once more, that she would tell him the plain truth that was right, that she would bid him farewell, and promise to pray for him, as she must pray for herself. But ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... seeking to deepen the shadows that surround us. But where is the man who thinks he has lived that will deny woman's power over us? Has he ever taken leave of a beautiful dancer with trembling hands? Has he ever felt that indefinable enervating magnetism which, in the midst of the dance, under the influence of music, and the warmth, making all else seem cold, that comes from a young woman, electrifying her and leaping from her to him as the perfume of aloes ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... attendance at the Fulton-Street Church. That attendance had been punctual, indeed, for nearly all the first year of his city life, in virtue of the inexorable habit of his education; but Dr. Mowry had not won upon him by any personal magnetism. The city Doctor was a ponderously good man, preaching for the most part ponderous sermons, and possessed of a most imposing friendliness of manner. When Reuben had presented to him the credentials from his father, (which he could hardly have done, save for the urgency of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various

... the most reesentful outfit I'm ever inveigled into tryin' to give a show to. I certainly has no thought of rubbin' wrong-ways the pop'lar bristles. All I aims at is to give a exhibition of anamile magnetism, cure what halt an' blind—if any—is cripplin' an' moonin' about, c'llect my dinero an' peacefully hit the trail. An' yet it looks like a prejewdice exists ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis

... eighteenth century, and conceitedly talk as if human reason had not a manacle left about her, but that philosophy had broken down all the strongholds of prejudice, ignorance, and superstition: and yet at this very time Mesmer has got an hundred thousand pounds by animal magnetism in Paris, and Mainanduc is getting as much in London. There is a fortune-teller in Westminster who is making little less. Lavater's Physiognomy-books sell at fifteen guineas a set. The divining-rod is still considered as oracular ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... declination; it increases regularly for five years, and decreases as regularly through another five. If it can be discovered that the horizontal intensity is similarly affected in a similar period, another of the laws of terrestrial magnetism will be added to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... of it in its uncombined state. Without heat all the matter of the world would be condensed into a point by the power of attraction; and neither fluidity nor life could exist. There are also particular powers of repulsion, as those of magnetism and electricity, and of chemistry, such as oil and water; which last may be as numerous as the particular attractions which constitute chemical affinities; and may both of them exist as atmospheres round the individual particles of matter; ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... is not unlikely that some of the younger girls were so far carried along by imitation or imaginative sympathy as in some degree to "credit their own lie." Any one who has watched or made experiments in animal magnetism knows how easy it is to persuade young women of nervous temperaments that they are doing that by the will of another which they really do by an obscure volition of their own, under the influence of an imagination ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell

... destroy the promise of endurance. His heavy, dark hair and dark gray eyes, his straight nose and firm mouth under a dark mustache, and his well-set chin made up an attractive but not handsome face. The magnetism of his personality was not in manly beauty. It was an inborn gift and would have characterized him in any condition in life. There was about him a genial dignity that made men look up to him and a willingness to serve that made selfishness seem mean. He could not have been thirty, although he had ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter

... jumped to the eye—and with a careless, indifferent grace—five years had only matured and increased his attractions. He had "it"—manifesting in every part of him and his atmosphere! A magnetism, a hateful, odious power which she felt, and fiercely resented. He had recovered completely from whatever shock he had felt upon seeing her it would seem! for his face looked absolutely unconcerned now and perfectly ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... on her arrival Edith noticed a tall, clean-shaven man, with smooth fair hair, observant blue eyes, and a rather humorous expression, and she instantly decided that she would try to will him to take her to dinner. (Rather a superfluous effort of magnetism, since it must have been settled already by fate and the ribbons.) It was obvious from one quick glance that he shared the wish. To their absurdly great mutual disappointment (a lot of ground was covered very quickly at ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson

... American novelists. The scene, which is laid in the old Puritanic town of Salem, extends from the period of the witchcraft excitement to the present time, connecting the legends of the ancient superstition with the recent marvels of animal magnetism, and affording full scope for the indulgence of the most weird and sombre fancies. Destitute of the high-wrought manifestations of passion which distinguished the "Scarlet Letter," it is more terrific in its conception, and not less intense in its execution, but ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... betray their confidence: they did not falter save possibly for brief moments during the gloomy summer of 1864. The people who gave their unreserved support to Lincoln were endued with intelligence and common sense; not attracted by any personal magnetism of the man, they had, by a process of homely reasoning, attained their convictions and from these they were not to be shaken. This is the safety of a dictatorship as long as the same intelligence obtains among the voters as now; for the people will not support a ruler in the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... muscular with exercise and full-blooded with health. She was glad that the body was changed; glad that its beauty, too, had gone some other-where than into the coffin. She had loved his hands as apart from himself; loved their strong warm magnetism. They lay limp and yellow on the quilt: she knew that they were already cold, and that moisture was gathering on them. For a moment something convulsed within her. They had gone too. She repeated the words twice, and, after them, "forever." And the while the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... explain untechnically. But the long and the short of it is that when a current of electricity passes through a wire there's a lot of magnetism present round that wire; and if you put another wire parallel to, and within what we call its magnetic field—why then, the second wire will also ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... meeting of the Council Fire and perhaps more under the spell of Polly's magnetism than she realized, Miss McMurtry, although it was plain that she was a good deal vexed, did not put ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook

... certain alluring attributes, such as their unpolluted mediaeval ideas on the sanctity of guests and the punctilious maintenance of their honour,[80] their readiness to die for freedom as well as for a quarrel about a sheep, and their not infrequent personal magnetism. They are very abstemious, their morals are pure, they have certain mental qualities, as yet undeveloped, and they are thrifty. But "they are so devoid of both originality and unity," says Sir Charles Eliot,[81] that acutest of observers, "that it is vain to seek ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an impassible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar. "Whether we like it or not," he wrote at this time, "our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... when you are left alone?" he asked her. Every word was a caress, the tone of his voice implying that she should never be left alone, the magnetism of his presence assuring her that she would never ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung

... With your position—and your money! Rich and brilliant clergymen aren't so common, Donald Brown. And your personality, your magnetism! Men care for you. Women have always hung ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond

... correct, would have its needle point directly to the real or true North. But practically no compass with which you will become familiar will be correct. It will have an error in it due to the magnetism of the earth. This is called Variation. It will also have an error in it due to the magnetism of the iron in the ship. This is called Deviation. You are undoubtedly familiar with the fact that the earth is a huge magnet and that the magnets ...
— Lectures in Navigation • Ernest Gallaudet Draper

... Ah, cousin how old you make me feel! I would to God my son looked as you did then; but the Duke is killing him with his nostrums. The child was healthy enough when he was born; but what with novenas and touching of relics and animal magnetism and electrical treatment, there's not a bone in his little body but the saints and the surgeons are fighting over its possession. Have you read 'Emile,' cousin, by the new French author—I forget his name? Well, I would have the child brought up like 'Emile,' allowed to run wild in the country ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... pulse thumping a little as she opened the library door. There was undoubtedly something about the Squire—some queer magnetism—born perhaps of his very restlessness and unexpectedness—that made life in his neighbourhood seldom less than interesting. His temper this morning would probably be of the worst. Something, or some one, had defeated ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the hat-trade and the article-Paris, this prince of travellers was called, at the time of which we write, purely and simply, Gaudissart. At the age of twenty-two he was already famous by the power of his commercial magnetism. In those days he was slim, with a joyous eye, expressive face, unwearied memory, and a glance that guessed the wants of every one; and he deserved to be, what in fact he became, the king of commercial travellers, the Frenchman ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac

... Bache on the "Tides," Professor Dalton on "Embryology," Professor J.D. Dana on "Crystallography," Dr. W.H. Draper on the "Nervous System," Professor James Hall on "Palaeontology," Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, on "Magnetism" and "Meteorology," James T. Hodge on "Earth" and "Electricity," Frank H. Storer on "Chemistry" and kindred subjects, Dr. Reuben on "Heat," "Light," "Vision," "Winds," etc., and the philological contributions of Dr. Kraitsir ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... lot of most of the Staff that they developed an interest in terrestrial magnetism. For one thing every man had carried boulders to the great stockade surrounding the Magnetograph House. Then, too, recorders were regularly needed to assist the magnetician in the absolute Hut. There, if the temperature were not too low and the observations not too lengthy, the recorder ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... came up and asked leave to present his friend Perry. The doctor, like all young men who knew Mrs. Waldeaux, had succumbed to her peculiar charm, which was only that of a woman past her youth who had strong personal magnetism and not a spark of coquetry. George's friends all were sure that they would fall in love with a woman just like her—but not a man of them ever thought of ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis

... self-sacrificing. Like all men ambitious to rule, "he learned how to obey." He pondered on the Holy Scriptures as well as on the canons of the Church. So marked a man was he that he was early chosen as prior of his convent; and so great were his personal magnetism, eloquence, and influence that "he induced Bruno, the Bishop of Toul, when elected pope by the Emperor of Germany, to lay aside the badges and vestments of the pontifical office, and refuse his title, until he should be elected by the clergy and people of Rome,"—thus ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... which caused his host to grow confused, to blush, to shake his head in deprecation, and to end by declaring that the concession was nothing, and that, his one desire being to manifest the dictates of his heart and the psychic magnetism which his friend exercised, he, in short, looked upon the dead souls as so ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... much—it strikes the attitude of his troops. It is up to Stopford and Hammersley to make those gestures. Stopford was not there, and is not the type; Hammersley is not that type either. How true it is that age, experience, wisdom count for less than youth, magnetism and love of danger when inexperience has to ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... adopted by the excited town of Nuremberg, he was sent to be educated by and live with a schoolmaster named Daumer, and was studied by Feuerbach. They found, in Kaspar, a splendid example of the 'sensitive,' and a noble proof of the powers of 'animal magnetism.' In Germany, at this time, much was talked and written about 'somnambulism' (the hypnotic state), and about a kind of 'animal magnetism' which, in accordance with Mesmer's theory, was supposed to pass between stars, metals, magnets, and human beings. The effects produced on the patient by the hypnotist ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... back to work, so I took Georgie to tea at a literary club, and we talked. I then discovered in a panic that it was half-past six. The whist-drive was at eight, and I had yet to dine and get down to Surbiton. Georgie, by that subtle magnetism which he possesses, had drawn a bunch of the boys about him, and had induced them to make a night of it with him; so we went to Simpson's to eat, and I left them at the table, very merry, and departed to Waterloo. Somewhere, between ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... 1856.[66] Arriving in Boston, they were introduced to each other in the street by a Kansas man, who chanced to be with Mr. Stearns on his way to the committee rooms in Nilis's Block, School Street. Captain Brown made a profound impression on all who came within the sphere of his moral magnetism. Emerson called him 'the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.' His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... he was fortunate in the branches that more immediately touched on his career. The physical laboratory was the best mounted in Italy. Bancalari, the professor of natural philosophy, was famous in his day; by what seems even an odd coincidence, he went deeply into electro-magnetism; and it was principally in that subject that Signor Flaminio, questioned in Latin and answering in Italian, passed his Master of Arts degree with first-class honours. That he had secured the notice of his teachers one circumstance ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Acton had looked back as she hurried down the avenue, she would have seen poor Jonathan still watching her with all his eyes till she was out of sight. Perhaps, though, she might have guessed it—there is a sympathy in these things, the true animal magnetism—and I dare say that was the very reason why she did not once ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... end of the bridge he had attempted to cross. It bore the name of Dark Hollow, and hollow and dark it looked in the universal gloom. But the power of its associations was upon him, and before he knew it, he was retracing his steps as though drawn by a magnetism he could not resist, till he stood within this hollow and possibly on the very foot of ground from the mere memory of which he ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story. He did not share the man's superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism. Yet even then, the widow's action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger. A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, languid ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... defence was chiefly remarkable for the long pauses he made from time to time, occupying himself with looking steadfastly at the president, or the advocate-general. He said he wished to make them feel "the power of the flesh." But this species of animal magnetism appears to have had no other effect than that of irritating the court. He and some others were condemned to pay a fine, and suffer a year's imprisonment. The family was dispersed. For the present there was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various

... moment. The words held a new and soul-shattering significance for him. Then as the others waited breathlessly, he went on. His beautiful, mellow voice, his remarkable enunciation, the magnetism of his personality stirred his little audience, just as thousands of greater audiences had been ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... aptitude for God might have remained latent, obtain a fresh start; an impetus to growth. There is a sense in which he might say with the Johannine Christ, "He that receiveth me receiveth Him that sent me"; for yielding to his magnetism, men really yield to the drawing of the Spirit itself. And when they do this, their lives are found to reproduce—though with less intensity—the life history of their leader. Therefore the main characters ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... was one of the favorites of the West, Jackson was the West itself. "While Clay was able to voice, with statesmanlike ability, the demand for economic legislation to promote her interests, and while he exercised an extraordinary fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence, he never became the hero of the great masses of the West; he appealed rather to the more intelligent—to the men of business and of property."[5] Jackson, however, was the very personification of the contentious, self-confident, ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg

... went on, "small portions of magnetism, as it were, are imparted to fractions of the steel wire as it passes between two carbon electric magnets. Each impression represents a sound wave. There is no apparent difference in the wire, yet each particle of steel undergoes an electromagnetic transformation by which the sound is indelibly ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve

... very well as far as you would go, gentlemen," said the Colonel of the 23d. "The autopsy might explain the delirium of our unfortunate friend, but it would not account for the impression produced upon the young lady. Is it fascination, magnetism, or what?" ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About

... The sun was lost in the cloudbank out of which a hot wind was sweeping eastward. Vic was telling the story well, and the magnetism of his voice was compelling. Elinor drew nearer ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter

... been secret societies with oaths and pledges. The habit of talking about matters of government spread more and more.[Footnote: Cherest, ii. 101. Droz, i. 326. See in Brissot ii. 415, an account of a club to discuss political questions, under pretense of studying animal magnetism. Lafayette, d'Espresmenil, and others were members. Their ideas were vague enough. Brissot was for a republic, D'Espresmenil for giving the power to the Parliament, Bergasse for a new form of government of which he was to be the Lycurgus. Morellet, i. 346. Lameth, i. 34 n. Sainte-Beuve, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... of ether sparks close to the ship, and a reddening of the hull, but nothing more. It seemed that the electro-barrages of the Wandl and allied ships were very similar in nature, an aura of electro-magnetism, enclosing the ship like a curtain fifty feet away, absorbed the electronic stream of the enemy bolt. The Wandl ship flung no bolts; she loosed a score of the whirling discs during the passing. They were ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings

... her mouth, with its small, even, teeth, attractive, but she would have laughed if anybody had called her beautiful. She sometimes doubted if she were even pretty. Yet few men had met her and remained entirely undisturbed. She had a magnetism. One hapless youth, who had laid his heart at her feet and had been commanded to pick it up again, had endeavored subsequently to explain her attraction (to a bosom friend over a mournful bottle of the best in the club smoking-room) in these words: ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... move about its poles: the earth is a magnetic body, therefore, etc. The iron and its magnetism are typical of two natures in one person; so it is said, "Si exaltatus fuero a terra, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... other by the homogeneous ether which extends throughout all space. This extremely light and attenuated (if not imponderable) ether causes, by its vibrations, all the phenomena of light and heat, electricity and magnetism. We can imagine it either as a continuous substance occupying the space between the mass-atoms, or as composed of separate particles; in the latter case we might perhaps attribute to these ether-atoms an inherent power of repulsion in contrast to the immanent attracting power of the heavy mass-atoms, ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel

... he had taken on women's hearts, trampling them mercilessly in the process. And since he was admittedly unscrupulous, it was not surprising, for he was possessed not only of an attractive appearance, but of great personal magnetism when he ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page

... greatly daring, but with Lola's magnetism still upon him, "you will not regret it. I assure you this one is an exception. She is delightful. That is the only word for it. Never have I seen anybody to equal her. Such ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... We first find it in Ptolemy (vii. 2) whose Maniolai Islands, of India extra Gangem, cause iron nails to fly out of ships, the effect of the Lapis Herculeus (Loadstone). Rabelais (v. c. 37) alludes to it and to the vulgar idea of magnetism being counteracted by Skordon (Scordon or garlic). Hence too the Adamant (Loadstone) Mountains of Mandeville (chaps. xxvii.) and the "Magnetic Rock" in Mr Puttock's clever "Peter Wilkins." I presume that the myth also arose ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... a prerogative instance of the magnetism of royalty,—of the social power of the court as an institution. It was a watering-place, in a small way, before Eugenie's advent; but there was not a tithe of its present size and popularity. In 1840, it numbered in all not more than fifty houses, a few of them lodgings or humble ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... only be penetrated by one of the seven primary rays—the blue ray; the remaining six rays, travelling with the velocity of 186,000 miles a second, falling upon the blue glass, are suddenly arrested; the impact evolves upon the surface of the glass friction, heat, electricity and magnetism; the heat expands the molecules of the glass, and a current of electricity and magnetism passes through it into the room; this current, falling upon animal or vegetable life within, stimulates it to unusual vigor. Certainly the results achieved, and abundantly ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various

... with the history of animal magnetism during the present century know that it has nobly fulfilled its mission as a system of therapeutics, by alleviating or curing all forms of disease of both body and mind. That which cures bodily diseases and sometimes overcomes insanity has certainly power enough to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... glimpse. Their control promises us now a dominion over the most intimate and inaccessible recesses of our lives in a way comparable only to the control we now exercise over the forces and energies once revered as the instruments of the gods—light, heat, magnetism, electricity. We have learned how to control and change our environment. We are now learning, endocrine research is now discovering, how to control ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... INDUCED MAGNETISM. The magnetic action of the earth, whereby every particle of soft iron in certain positions is ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... daily commonplace life. Every pure sentiment, noble aspiration, and manly instinct, every natural affection, gentle feeling, and religious principle, is tainted by his contaminating companionship. He infuses a subtle skepticism of the reality of goodness by the mere magnetism of his evil presence. Persons who have been guarded against the usual contrivances by which the conventional Devil works his wonders find themselves impotent before the fascinations of Densdeth. They follow while they detest him, and are at once his victims and his accomplices. In those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... to the nearest descending ladder. In the deserted lower room the bank of dials stood neglected. A score of dials and switches were here, governing the magnetism of different areas of the ship. There should have been a night operator, but he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... doctor by courtesy only, what was called in those days an "irregular" or "quack" doctor. He called himself a "Professor of Animal Magnetism." I had come across him in the course of some amateur investigations into the phenomena of animal magnetism. I don't think he knew anything about medicine, but he was certainly a remarkable mesmerist. It was for the purpose of being put to sleep by his manipulations that I used to send for ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... sense of guilt is not a distinguishing characteristic of the child of the present day, and it may also be doubted whether such reprobates as Ned and his wife would to-day be affected much if at all by the "Pilgrim's Progress." There was probably great personal magnetism in Bunyan himself. We are told that after his discharge from prison, his popularity as a preacher widened rapidly. Such vast crowds of people flocked to hear him that his place of worship had to be enlarged. He went frequently to London on week days to deliver addresses in the large ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... These were new lights. She began to recall all that she had heard of young Hallin's position in the Labour movement; his personal magnetism and prestige; his power as a speaker. Her Socialist friends, she remembered, thought him in the way—a force, but a dangerous one. He was for the follies of compromise—could not be got to disavow the principle of private property, while ready to go great lengths in certain directions ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward



Words linked to "Magnetism" :   geophysics, magnetics, attractive, ferromagnetism, animal magnetism, diamagnetism, personal magnetism, electromagnetism



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