In many of the cases which have come to my attention in the past many years, the stammerer or stutterer has been afflicted with a malady more difficult to cure than stammering, viz.:  The Habit of Procrastination.

“Oh, I will wait a little while,” says the stammerer.  “A little while can’t make any difference!” And then the little while grows into a big while and the big while grows into a year and the year grows into a lifetime and he is still stammering.

Several months ago, an old man, stooped in stature, care-worn of countenance and halting of step, presented himself to me for diagnosis.  His face was drawn into long, hard lines.  His eyes shifted from side to side, glancing furtively here and there.

In his trembling hands was a worn old derby which he turned about nervously as he stood there talking.  The nervousness, the trembling of the hands, the drawn face, the shifting eyes—­all this was explained by the story that this man told as he sat there beside the desk.

“I fell from a ladder when I was ten years old,” he said.  “After that, I always stammered.  My parents thought it was a habit—­I can remember yet how my mother scolded me day after day and told me to ‘quit talking that way.’  But it was useless to tell me to quit.  I couldn’t quit!  If I could have done it, certainly I would, for having stammered yourself, you know what it means.

“School now began to be a burden.  I think I must have supplied fun for every boy on the school grounds during recess-time, for if there was a boy who didn’t make fun of me and mock me and laugh at me, then I don’t know who he was.

“Then one day I started back to school at noontime, saw a crowd of boys on the corner a couple of blocks away, thought of what a task it would be to go into that crowd or try to pass it.  A mortal and unreasoning fear came over me.  Try as I would, I couldn’t screw my courage up to the point of going past that crowd.  But I had small choice.  It was either go that way or stay out of school.  And stay out of school I did.

“And then came the crucial day.  I could not ask my parents to vouch for any absence—­I dared not tell them I was not there.  So I went back without an excuse.  The teacher was angry.  She tried to get me to talk, but I could not say a word.  So she sent me to the principal.  She, too, asked me to explain.  Try as I would, I couldn’t get the first word out.  Not a sound.

“She, too, failed to understand.  Result:  I was expelled from school—­sorry day—­nobody seemed to understand my trouble—­nobody seemed to sympathize with me—­a stammerer.

“Although I pretended to be at school, before the week was out, my parents found out.  Then a storm ensued.  I tried to tell them the truth.  They wouldn’t listen.  Father stormed and mother scolded.  There seemed to be no living for me there.  So I ran away from home—­ran away because my parents wouldn’t listen—­because they wouldn’t try to understand.