y be. You can get the
facts if you want them. You can learn the truth if you will. Truth is
better than false beliefs and facts are better than superstition or
hearsay, which in every case leads to misery, dejection and despair--a
ruined life where a successful, happy and contented life might have
been--except for stammering.

You have a well-defined responsibility to your son or daughter. You
have a duty to perform--that is, to equip that boy or girl of yours to
go out into the world as well equipped as any other boy or girl--and
that means equipped with perfect speech--without which they will be too
greatly handicapped to fully succeed.

CHAPTER IX

THE DANGERS OF DELAY

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 cr