The auction-mart frequently governs the price of old furniture and gives it an upward lift. The psychology of the auction-room is an interesting study. The loaded atmosphere of the place has a compelling influence that gets the better of one’s judgment. In a shop a man scoffs at the tall price of a piece of furniture and haggles doggedly with the dealer to reduce it thirty shillings; in the auction-room if the same piece were offered he would compete with the crowd to raise the price of it incontinently. It is the consistent conduct of inconsistent human nature. It is that bellicose little devil who hides himself at the bottom of every human being, impelling him down into the danger zone to fight, who is guilty of the rash and feckless deed. A man enters the auction-room in a happy, breezy frame of mind, not to buy, just to look on and see what things are fetching. The serpent of the place tempts him, and he is a lost soul. His good resolutions evaporate like water on a hot plate, leaving no trace behind. The fighting impulse in him leaps up, and he bids and bids again, and eventually he finds himself the possessor of a rare old mahogany bureau hatched in the reign of our King George, but inadvertently described in the catalogue as a masterpiece of the cabinet-maker’s craft composed in the times of Queen Anne! *IX* *THE LURE OF PERSONALITY* Personal influence is a subtle impalpable sovereign power that man possesses; sometimes it possesses the man, for influence often is an unconscious element in his life which exhales from him like the fragrance from a flower or miasma from a swamp. You cannot investigate it. It is moral force. Some men possess much of it, others less, the residue of mankind none. That is the mystery of influence. You cannot regulate it, calculate it, or tabulate it in standard quantities. Its operation is noiseless as a shadow, dangerous as lightning, profound as eternity, beautiful as the five wise virgins, or devilish as Mephistopheles. We speak here of personal influence. There is an influence of a baser sort which is powerful in its way--the influence of money. Money is extraneous matter. Wealth magnifies a man in people’s eyes, but the man himself may be small without the money inflation. Strip the rich man of his shekels, and you strip him of his significance. He counts no more than an empty egg-shell after the rats have eaten the meat out of it. Frequently the extraordinary man is only an ordinary man placed in extraordinary circumstances.