chapter4.2

I spent an evening in the dressing room of Howard Thurston the last time he appeared on Broadway — Thurston was the acknowledged dean of magicians.

For forty years he had traveled all over the world, time and again, creating illusions, mystifying audiences, and making people gasp with astonishment.

More than 60 million people had paid admission to his show, and he had made almost $2 million in profit.

I asked Mr. Thurston to tell me the secret of his success.

His schooling certainly had nothing to do with it, for he ran away from home as a small boy, became a hobo, rode in boxcars, slept in haystacks, begged his food from door to door, and learned to read by looking out of boxcars at signs along the railway.

Did he have a superior knowledge of magic?

No, he told me hundreds of books had been written about legerdemain and scores of people knew as much about it as he did.

But he had two things that the others didn’t have.

First, he had the ability to put his personality across the footlights.

He was a master showman.

He knew human nature.

Everything he did, every gesture, every intonation of his voice, every lifting of an eyebrow had been carefully rehearsed in advance, and his actions were timed to split seconds.

But, in addition to that, Thurston had a genuine interest in people.

He told me that many magicians would look at the audience and say to themselves, “Well, there is a bunch of suckers out there, a bunch of hicks; I’ll fool them all right.”

But Thurston’s method was totally different.

He told me that every time he went on stage he said to himself: “I am grateful because these people come to see me, they make it possible for me to make my living in a very agreeable way.

I’m going to give them the very best I possibly can.”

He declared he never stepped in front of the footlights without first saying to himself over and over: “I love my audience. I love my audience.”

Ridiculous? Absurd?

You are privileged to think anything you like.

I am merely passing it on to you without comment as a recipe used by one of the most famous magicians of all time.

George Dyke of North Warren, Pennsylvania, was forced to retire from his service station business after thirty years when a new highway was constructed over the site of his station.

It wasn’t long before the idle days of retirement began to bore him, so he started filling in his time trying to play music on his old fiddle.

Soon he was traveling the area to listen to music and talk with many of the accomplished fiddlers.

In his humble and friendly way he became generally interested in learning the background and interests of every musician he met.

Although he was not a great fiddler himself, he made many friends in this pursuit.

He attended competitions and soon became known to the country music fans in the eastern part of the United States as “Uncle George, the Fiddle Scraper from Kinzua County.”

When we heard Uncle George, he was seventy-two and enjoying every minute of his life.

By having a sustained interest in other people, he created a new life for himself at a time when most people consider their productive years over.

That, too, was one of the secrets of Theodore Roosevelt’s astonishing popularity.

Even his servants loved him.

His valet, James E. Amos, wrote a book about him entitled Theodore Roosevelt, Hero to His Valet.

In that book Amos relates this illuminating incident: My wife one time asked the President about a bobwhite.

She had never seen one and he described it to her fully.

Sometime later, the telephone at our cottage rang.

Amos and his wife lived in a little cottage on the Roosevelt estate at Oyster Bay.

My wife answered it and it was Mr. Roosevelt himself.

He had called her, he said, to tell her that there was a bobwhite outside her window and that if she would look out she might see it.

Little things like that were so characteristic of him.

Whenever he went by our cottage, even though we were out of sight, we would hear him call out: “Oo-oo-oo, Annie?” or “Oo-oo-oo, James!”

It was just a friendly greeting as he went by.

How could employees keep from liking a man like that? How could anyone keep from liking him?

Roosevelt called at the White House one day when the President and Mrs. Taft were away.

His honest liking for humble people was shown by the fact that he greeted all the old White House servants by name, even the scullery maids.

“When he saw Alice, the kitchen maid,” writes Archie Butt, “he asked her if she still made corn bread.

Alice told him that she sometimes made it for the servants, but no one ate it upstairs.

‘They show bad taste,’ Roosevelt boomed, ‘and I’ll tell the President so when I see him.’”

“Alice brought a piece to him on a plate, and he went over to the office eating it as he went and greeting gardeners and laborers as he passed. . .”

He addressed each person just as he had addressed them in the past.

Ike Hoover, who had been head usher at the White House for forty years, said with tears in his eyes:“It is the only happy day we had in nearly two years, and not one of us would exchange it for a hundred-dollar bill”

The same concern for the seemingly unimportant people helped sales representative Edward M. Sykes, Jr., of Chatham, New Jersey, retain an account.

“Many years ago,” he reported, “I called on customers for Johnson and Johnson in the Massachusetts area.

One account was a drug store in Hingham.

Whenever I went into this store I would always talk to the soda clerk and sales clerk for a few minutes before talking to the owner to obtain his order.

One day I went up to the owner of the store, and he told me to leave as he was not interested in buying J&J products anymore because he felt they were concentrating their activities on food and discount stores to the detriment of the small drugstore.

I left with my tail between my legs and drove around the town for several hours.

Finally, I decided to go back and try at least to explain our position to the owner of the store.”