If the occupations of the day and of the evening leave us no time to devote to this exercise, we can always go through it in the moments between retiring to bed and falling asleep.
It will thus be seen that there is really no valid excuse for not undertaking this practise, whose effects will certainly be most beneficial.
But our physical efforts must not stop here.
It is more than necessary that we should make others feel the effects of the mastery that we are slowly acquiring over ourselves.
The eye is an invaluable assistant to the man who is studying to acquire poise.
It is not necessary here, in connection with the magnetic properties of the eye, to enter into a digression too extensive for the scope of this book, but we can not neglect this one more-than-important factor altogether.
We are speaking now not only of the power in the gaze of others but of that of our own eyes in relation to our associates.
We must do our best, in fine, to develop the power of our gaze, while studying to fortify ourselves against the influence brought to bear upon us in this direction by others.
One frequently notices, especially in the case of people who are timid, a propensity to lose their powers of resistance with those who are able to fix them with a steady stare.
One has often seen people who lack will-power emerging completely upset from the grueling of an interview in which they have admitted everything that they had most fervently resolved never to disclose.
A superior force has dominated them to such an extent that they have found it impossible to conduct the discussion in the way they had planned to do it.
The man who is in earnest about acquiring poise must, then, be on his guard against betraying himself under the magnetism of some one else's gaze.
At the same time he must cultivate his own powers of the eye, so that he, too, can possess that ability against which, in others, he must be careful to protect himself, and can utilize it for his own ends.
The first principle is to avoid looking directly into the pupils of one's interlocutor.
This is the only way in which a beginner can avoid being affected by the magnetism of the gaze.
By this word magnetism we have in mind nothing verging in the least upon the supernatural.