Jim Steinmeyer Read Online Free PDF

himself to its dramatic element, which is by far the most important portion. The performer should always bear in mind that he fills the character of a person possessing supernatural powers, and should endeavor, in every word and gesture, to enter into the spirit of his part. As the true actor, playing Hamlet, will endeavor actually to be Hamlet for the time, [the magician] must learn to believe in himself.” If Willie Ryan’s transformation was nothing short of miraculous, “The perfection of conjuring lies in the ars artem celandi ,” according to the venerable expert in deception, Professor Hoffmann, “in sending away the spectators persuaded that sleight of hand has not been employed at all, and unable to suggest any solution of the wonders they have seen.”
    When he returned to William Round’s office, Willie Ryan had replaced Modern Magic with the Bible. In the course of just days, he had scoured the pages, committing long passages to memory, and could bolster his conversations with trenchant quotations from the Lord. Round was suspicious, and questioned the boy intensely about his conversion, but as a regular churchgoer and the son of a preacher, he was in a good position to judge the boy’s sincerity. Round confessed to being thunderstruck by the change. “There is no mistake to this,” the secretary of the New York Prison Association wrote to a friend. “We have seen him every day since, and he has been an example to us all, in the consistency of his life, in the humility of his new character.”
    Standing before Round’s desk, his head held high, the boy now spoke with shy deference but newfound pride. Determined to no longer be the bully or the criminal, he was unsure about his new role. He started by quietly admitting that his name wasn’t Willie Ryan. It was actually Howard Thurston. Howard Franklin Thurston. Yes, he had a family, in Columbus, Ohio.
     
     
    HOWARD FRANKLIN THURSTON was born on July 20, 1869, in Columbus, Ohio, the middle child of William and Margaret Thurston. His father, William Henry Thurston, served briefly as a private in the Third Ohio Regiment during the Civil War and then became a wheelwright and carriage maker. His mother, Margaret Cloude, was the daughter of an Ohio farmer. The couple had five children, daughter May (Myrtle) born in 1865, and then sons Charles, Howard, Harry, and William, the youngest, born in 1876.
    This should have been a happy, successful, middle-class family, but William Thurston’s business suddenly collapsed in the financial panic of 1873. An amateur inventor, he was forced to tinker several ideas in desperation, which he then abandoned in boxes around the house. His inspirations included a curling iron, cigar-making machine, two-wheeled roller skate, and a fire escape. Each was a source of failure and frustration, the right idea at the wrong time, a near miss, of no interest to manufacturers. William had something of a nervous breakdown that left him unable to work or, it seems, direct the family finances. He often escaped to the corner saloon.
    The boys were naturally fascinated by their father’s inventions, even if his financial straits confused them. Nine-year-old Charles and seven-year-old Howard discovered a discarded box of beefsteak pounders in the attic, one of his father’s failed products. It consisted of a round board with pointed projections and a wooden mallet with matching points. Two or three quick blows made even the cheapest cut of meat delectable—at least, that was the theory. Without telling their parents, the boys set out across the neighborhood, lugging the box. Reasoning that the people who ran the local bank must have money, they pushed their way in and demanded to see the president. When he heard they were Bill Thurston’s boys, he seemed to take pity and quickly rewarded them with a silver dollar. Their success was tempered, that evening at the dinner table, when their father told them that the same bank president, that