Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/253

 John Wesley was such a man. I read recently that, when he was preaching at Tullamore, a large cat leaped from the rafters upon a woman's head, and ran over the heads and shoulders of the closely packed congregation. "But none of them cried out any more than if it had been a butterfly." There was a test of the preacher's supremacy. What other influence could have been so absolute and coercive? When I was a very little girl I was taken to see Edwin Booth play "Hamlet," in the old Walnut Street theatre of Philadelphia. That night a cat entered with the ghost, and paced sedately in his wake across the ramparts of Elsinore. The audience shouted its amusement, and the poignancy of a great scene, interpreted by a great actor, was temporarily lost. "Spellbound" is a word in common use, expressing, as a rule, very ordinary attention. Booth cast a spell, but it