he placed himself under treatment, nevertheless, and in a few
weeks' time, the Unit Method had restored him to perfect speech. He
left entirely convinced that stammering could be cured, because it had
been done in his own case which had so long seemed beyond all hope.

Many years afterward, he wrote a letter which I take the liberty of
reproducing here for the encouragement and inspiration of everyone who
is similarly afflicted and who feels as this man felt--that he is
incurable:

"I tried to be cured of stammering at five different times by five
different men at a total cost of more than one thousand dollars. None
of them cured me. Then I decided to try the Unit Method. Nine years ago
I did so--a decision that I have never regretted. It was evident that
this method was based on a comprehensive knowledge of the art of
speech. I am now a piano salesman and talk by the hour all day long;
talk over the telephone perfectly; and many tell me that I speak more
distinctly than the majority of people who have never stammered. I
believe this is because I was taught through the Unit Method the very
fundamentals of speech."

This man's case is typical of the hundreds of failures-to-cure which
are responsible for the belief that stammering cannot be cured. The
fact that he had made five separate attempts to be cured would, in the
mind of the average man, establish the fact that stammering cannot be
cured and yet it is seen that even in this extreme case, under the
application of the proper scientific methods, the stammerer found
freedom of speech without unusual difficulty and in a comparatively
short time.

CHAPTER II

CASES THAT "CURE THEMSELVES"

Not infrequently from some source will be heard a story, many times
retold, to the effect that "So-and-so" who stammered for many years has
been cured--that the trouble has magically disappeared and that he
stammers no longer.

What is the cause of this? What brings about such a miraculous cure?

The answer depends upon the case. Usually, the story is much more a
story than a fact. Few indeed have been the stammerers who have ever
actually heard the man stammer before "his trouble cured itself" and
then heard him talk perfectly afterwards. Like the stories of haunted
houses, there is nothing to substantiate the truth of the statement,
there is no evidence by which the story may be checked up.

In the rare cases where the facts would seem to indicate the truth of
the