Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
Louis R. Ehrich subject. In 1896, he was the sole delegate from the Rocky Mountain Region at the 1896 Democratic National Convention, also known as the Gold Convention of 1896. He wrote and published "The Question of Silver" to further explicate his views on the Free Silver issue. Despite his early opposition to William Jennings Bryan because of their differing opinions on the Gold Standard, Ehrich reconciled with him by the date of the 1900 election, largely thanks to Bryan's firm stance against the American annexation of the Philippines. In the mid 1890s, Ehrich combined his interest in European paintings with his knowledge