“Stammering is the cause of all my trouble.  My earlier associates have shunned me for several years, and I have sought the worst class of dives and the lowest kind of companions, where I was reasonably certain that I would not come in contact with those with whom I had associated in earlier years.  My eyes are wet with tears—­tears of remorse and regret—­because I see no chance in life for me now.”

The stammerer who thinks that success comes to the man who stammers—­who believes that the business world is willing to put up with anything less than fluent speech, should read this heart-broken letter from a young man: 

“I am a bookkeeper, and dearly love my work, but am afraid that I am going to have to give it up because my speech is getting worse, and I have noticed that the boss has mentioned it to me a couple of times now, and it almost breaks my heart to know that my position is going to get away from me.  No one realizes how much one suffers, and I’m afraid I’m going to break down with nervous prostration soon.  When one day is over with me, I wonder how I am going to get through with the next one.”

What are the results of stammering?  Should anyone ask that question, I could point to instances in my own experience that would prove that almost every undesirable condition of human existence may be the result of stammering.  I have seen young men who are business failures, dejected, hopeless, drifting along, men who in early years were intellectual giants, and who before their death were mere children in mental power, because they allowed stammering to destroy every valuable faculty they possessed.

I could point to children whom stammering had held back almost from the time they began to talk—­give cases of young men depressed, embarrassed, unsuccessful, because they stammer—­cite instances of all the worth-while things in life turned from the path of a young woman because she stammered.

Yet in the past, not one of these knew what was coming.  Not one realized where the trail was leading.  No stammerer can of himself see into the future.  But he can, at least, look into the future of others, who, like himself, are stammerers, and avoid the pitfalls into which they have fallen and save himself the mistakes they have made.

PART III

THE CURE OF STAMMERING AND STUTTERING

CHAPTER I

Can stammering BEALLY be cured?

It has only been a few years since the impression was abroad that stammering was incurable.  Not a particle of hope was held out to the afflicted individual that any semblance of a cure was possible by any method.  This erroneous idea that stammering could not be cured grew up in the mind of the average person as a result of one or all of the f ollowing conditions: 

1st—­The inability of the stammerer to cure himself and his further inability to outgrow the trouble, (although he was repeatedly told that he would outgrow it) was the first reason that led to the foolish and totally unfounded belief that stammering could not be cured.