Jim Steinmeyer by The Last Greatest Magician in the World Read Free Book Online Page B

boys. Firmness and love and careful training have won the boys to better lives.
    When Thurston left Northfield, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1891, he stopped in Canaan to visit William Round, who promptly recruited the young man to his cause. Round had introduced a new program to accept younger boys, aged nine to twelve. They were organized in a special “family” called the Lambfold and housed in a loft above the dairy on the Burnham grounds. He asked Thurston to become a charter member of a new fellowship called the Brotherhood of St. Christopher, and asked him to take charge of the Lambfold. Perhaps Round appealed to Thurston’s Christian charity, or perhaps he simply mentioned the considerable investment he, and his mother-in-law, had made toward Thurston’s education. Thurston realized that his future was still tied to Round and that he was obliged to repay the loan.
    In December 1891, after he had been at the Burnham Farm for over six months, he wrote to his old headmaster at Mount Hermon, Professor Cutler, “I came to the Burnham Industrial Farm when I left the school last June. I have joined the Brotherhood of St. Christopher, an organization to train young Christian men for institutional lives, that is, to work or take charge of other institutions. The time of service is three years. The brothers receive no salary, only a small fee for necessary things. Most everything is furnished us by the Farm. I suppose you are somewhat acquainted with the Burnham Industrial Farm.”
    He later remembered that he earned five dollars a month at Burnham, and his time there was productive, as he helped obtain a herd of cattle for the boys and raise funds for a new silo and gymnasium. But the duties at Burnham Farm satisfied him only in that he had no other plans for his future. As he wiled his days in Canaan, New York, weeding the onion field or driving the horse cart, he decided that he’d had enough of the peaceful, institutional life of the country.
    He lasted eighteen months at Burnham, certainly not the three-year term that he had pledged. It seems that Round’s tenure at Burnham, and the Brotherhood of St. Christopher, were slowly unwinding. Thurston had reached an elevated position within the hierarchy, but, “being sort of an independent individual, I had an idea how things should be run and I tried to run the institution,” he later recalled. “Anyhow, I didn’t agree with the rest of them, so we decided that I would leave.” When he departed on January 5, 1893, a cold, snowy day, all the boys lined up. Thurston bid them an affectionate good-bye, then climbed into a sleigh and was carried to the train station.
    William M. F. Round played an essential role in young Howard Thurston’s life, but in his later biographies, Thurston included his name with only passing references. He was merely “a noted philanthropist” who worked at the Prison Association and then offered the boy work. Thurston was always embarrassed by his connection to the head of the Prison Association—it raised obvious questions—and he felt guilty by disappointing this important patron.
     
     
    THURSTON WAS LUCKY when he left the Burnham Farm and traveled through Albany, New York. There he happened to see a bright lithograph advertising Herrmann the Great, the Mephistophelean magician from his youth who had so inspired him. Thurston left the train and ran to the Hermanus Beeker Hall, where he bought a ticket for the show.
    That night, Herrmann’s performance was even more marvelous than Thurston ever remembered. Thurston waited by the stage door, but didn’t have the courage to actually speak to the magician. Instead, he followed Alexander and Madame Adelaide Herrmann to the Keeler Hotel, asking for a room as close as possible to the great man.
    Howard spent a sleepless night, pacing the corridor, trying to work up the courage to knock on Herrmann’s door, and listening at the keyhole. He wondered if he should give up any further