Here was another failure that could be checked up against the instructor who knew nothing whatever about the cause of stammering.  The whole idea of the course was to cultivate voice and make me an orator.  That was very fine and would, no doubt, have done me a great deal of good, but it was of no use to try to cultivate a fine voice until I could use that voice in the normal way.  The finest voice in the world is of no use if you stammer, and cannot use it.  The school of elocution went the same way as all the rest—­it was a total failure so far as curing my stammering was concerned.

By this time, my effort to be cured of stammering had become a habit, just as eating and sleeping are habits.  I was determined to be cured.  I made up my mind I would never give up.  True, I often said to myself, “I may never be cured,” but in the same breath I resolved that if I was not, it could never be said that it was because I was a “quitter.”

My next experiment was with a man who claimed he could cure my stammering in one hour.  Think of it.  Here I had been, spending weeks and months trying out just one way of cure and here was a man who could do the whole job in one hour.  Wonderful power he must possess, I thought.  Of course, I did not believe he could do it.  I could not believe it.  It was not believable.  But nevertheless, in my effort to be cured, I had resolved to leave no stone unturned.  I made up my mind that the only way to be sure that I was not missing the successful method was to try them all.

So I put myself under this man’s hand.  He was a hypnotist.  He felt able to restore speech with a hypnotic sleep and the proper hypnotic suggestion while I was in the trance.  But like all the fake fol-de-rol with which I had come in contact, he did not even make an impression.

I will say in behalf of this hypnotic stammer doctor, however, that he was following distinguished precedent in attempting to cure stammering by hypnotism.  German professors in particular have been especially zealous in following out this line of endeavor and many of them have written volumes on the subject only to end up with the conclusion (in their own minds, at least) that it is a failure.  Hypnotism may be said to be a condition where the will of the subject is entirely dormant and his every act and thought controlled by the mind of the hypnotist.  I do not know, not having been conscious at the time, but it is not improbable that while in the hypnotic state, I was able to talk without stammering, since my words were directed by the mind of the professor, and not my own mind.  But inasmuch as I couldn’t have the professor carried around with me through the rest of my lifetime in order to use his mind, the treatment could not benefit me.