as compelled to undergo treatment for a throat
affection that threatened to be as serious as the stammering itself.

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