I next got in touch with an honest-looking old man with a beard like one of the prophets, who assured me with a great deal of professional dignity, that stammering was a mere trifle for a magnetic healer like himself and that he could cure it entirely in ten treatments.  So I planked down the specified amount for ten treatments, and went to him regularly three times a week for almost a month, when he explained to me, again with a plenitude of professionalism, that my case was a very peculiar one and that it would require ten more treatments.  But I could not figure out how, if ten treatments had done me no good, ten more would do any better.  So I declined to try his methods any further.  Once again I said to myself, “Well, this has failed, too—­I wonder what next?”

The next happened to be electrical treatments.  When I visited the electrical treatment specialist, he explained to me in a very effective manner just how (according to his views) stammering was caused by certain contractions of the muscles of the vocal organs, etc., and told me that his treatment surely was the thing to eliminate this contraction and leave my speech entirely free from stammering.  I knew something about my stammering then, but not a great deal—­consequently his explanation sounded plausible to me and appealed to me as being very sensible and so I decided to give it a trial.  I was glad after it was over that I had received no bad effects—­that was all the cause I had to be glad, for he had not changed my stammering one iota, nor had he changed my speech in any way to make it easier for me to talk.  Thus, had I found another one of the things that will not work and chalked up another failure against my attempts to be cured of stammering.

By this time, the reader may well wonder why I was not discouraged in my efforts to be cured.  Well, who will say that I was not?  I believe I was—­as far as it was possible for me to be discouraged at that time.  But despite all my failures, I had made up my mind never to give up until I was cured of stammering.  I set myself doggedly to the task of ridding myself of an impediment that I knew would always hold me down and prevent any measure of success.  I stayed with this task.  I never gave up.  I kept this one thing always hi mind.  It was a life job with me if necessary—­and I was not a “quitter.”  So failures and discouragements simply steeled me to more intense endeavors to be cured.  And while these endeavors cost my parents many hundreds of dollars and cost me many years of time, still, I feel today that they were worth while—­not worth while enough to go through again, or worth while enough to recommend to any one else—­but at least not a total loss to me.

CHAPTER VI

I REFUSE TO BE DISCOURAGED