Sing without difficulty:  Almost without exception, the stutterer or stammerer can sing without any difficulty, can talk to animals without stuttering or stammering, can talk when alone and in some cases can talk perfectly in a whisper.  Some stammerers have less difficulty in talking to strangers than in talking to friends or relatives while in other cases, the condition is exactly reversed.  A stutterer or stammerer almost always experiences difficulty in speaking over the telephone.  One experimenter has shown, however, that a stammerer can talk perfectly over the telephone so long as the receiver hook is depressed and there is no connection with another person at the other end of the line.  This experimenter shows that immediately the receiver hook is released and a connection is established, the halting, stumbling utterance begins.

These peculiarities of stuttering and stammering for many years puzzled investigators and were, in fact, finally responsible for arriving at the true cause of stammering.

Almost every stammerer seeks for an explanation of these peculiar manifestations.  Why is it, for instance, that a stammerer can sing without difficulty, although he cannot talk?  This is one of the best evidences that could be produced to show that stammering is the result of a lack of mental control.  The stammerer who can sing without difficulty has no organic or inherent defect in the vocal organs, that is sure.  If the stammerer can sing, and if this proves that he has no organic defect, then it follows logically that the cause of his trouble is mental and not physical.

Talk when alone:  The fact that a stammerer can talk without hesitation when alone and that he can talk to animals may be explained by a very simple illustration—­any stammerer can try this experiment on one of his friends who does not stammer.  He can prove that the reflex, or what might be termed subconscious movements of the bodily organs are more nearly normal than the same movements consciously controlled.  Take, for instance, the regular beating of the pulse.  Let anyone who does not stammer (it makes no difference in trying this experiment whether the person stammers or not, save that we are trying to prove that the condition may be brought about in one who is not a stammerer) feel his own pulse for sixty seconds.  Let him be thoroughly conscious of this effort to learn the rapidity of its beating.  If a disinterested observer could record the pulse as normally beating and the pulse under the conscious influence of the mind, it would be found that the pulse under the conscious effort is beating either more rapidly or more slowly or that it is not beating as regularly as in the case of unconscious or reflex action.

This same condition may be noticed in another unconscious or reflex action—­breathing.  The moment you become conscious of an attempt to breathe regularly, breathing becomes difficult, restricted, irregular, whereas this same action, when unconscious, is thoroughly regular and even.