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.

I once thought I had landed a job as stock chaser in a factory, but
here, too, stammering barred the way, for they told me that even the
stock chaser had to be able to deliver verbal messages from one foreman
to another. I didn't dare to try that.

Eventually, I drifted around to the Union News Company. They wanted a
boy to sell newspapers on trams running out over the Grand Trunk
Railway. I took the job--the last job in the world I should have
expected to hold, because of all the places a newsboy's job is one
where you need to have a voice and the ability to talk.

I hope no stammerer ever has a position that causes him as much
humiliation and suffering as that job caused me. You can imagine what
it meant to me to go up and down the aisles of the train, calling
papers and every few moments finding out that I couldn't say what I
started out to say and then go gasping and grunting down the aisle
making all sorts of facial grimaces.

How the passengers laughed at me! And how they made fun of me and asked
me all sorts of questions just to hear me try to talk. It almost made
me wish I could never see a human being again, so keen was the
suffering and so tense were my nerves as a result of this work.

I don't believe I ever did anything that kept me in a more frenzied
mental state than this work of trying to sell newspapers--and it wasn't
very long (as I had expected) until the manager found out my situation
and gently let me out.

Then I gave up, all at once. Was I discouraged? Well, perhaps. But not
exactly discouraged. Rather I saw the plain hopelessness of trying to
get or hold a job in my condition. So I prepared to go home. I didn't
want to do it, because I knew the neighbors and friends round about
would b