I tried everything that came to my attention—­first one thing and then another—­but without results.  Still I refused to be discouraged.  I kept on and on, my mother constantly encouraging and reassuring me.  And you will later see that I found a method that cured me.

There are always those who stand idly about and say, “It can’t be done!” Such people as these laughed at Fulton with his steamboat, they laughed at Stephenson and his steam locomotive, they laughed at Wright and the airplane.

They say, “It can’t be done”—­but it is done, nevertheless.

I turned a deaf ear to the people who tried to convince me that it couldn’t be done.  I had a firm belief in that old adage, “Where there is a will there is a way,” and I made another of my own, which said, “I will find a way or make one!”

And I did!

CHAPTER IV

A STAMMERER HUNTS A JOB

After recovering from my sad experiment with the “Wonderful Specialist,” I did not want to go home and listen to the Anvil Chorus of “It Can’t Be Done!” and “I Told You So!” I had no desire to be the object of laughter as well as pity.  So I tried to get a job in that same city.  I went from office to office—­but nobody had a job for a man who stammered.

Finally I did land a job, however, such as it was.  My duties were to operate the elevator in a hotel.  How I managed to get that job, I often wonder now, for nobody on whom I called had any place for a boy or man who stammered.  I thought it would be easy to find a job where I wouldn’t need to talk, but when I started out to look for this job, I found it wasn’t so easy after all.  Almost any job requires a man who can talk.  This I had learned in my own search for a place.  But somehow or other, I managed to get that job as elevator boy in a hotel.

For the work as elevator boy I was paid three dollars a week.  Wasn’t that great pay for a man grown?  But that’s what I got.

That is, I got it for a little while, until I lost my job.  For lose it I did before very long.  I found out that I couldn’t do much with even an elevator boy’s job at three dollars a week unless I could talk.  My employer found it out, too, and then he found somebody who could take my place—­a boy who could answer when spoken to.

Well, here I was out of a job again.  I am afraid I came pretty near being discouraged about that time.  Things looked pretty hopeless for me—­it was mighty hard work to get a job and the place didn’t last long after I had gotten it.

But, nevertheless, the only thing to do was to try again.  I started the search all over again.  I tried first one place and then another.  One man wanted me to start out as a salesman.  He showed me how I could make more money than I had ever made in my life—­convinced me that I could make it.  Then I started to tell my part of the story—­but I didn’t get very far before he discovered that I was a stammerer.  That was enough for him—­with a gesture of hopelessness, he turned to his desk.  “You’ll never do, young man, you’ll never do.  You can’t even talk!” And the worst of it was that he was right.