ore or less
an enemy of mine. And still worse, I came to believe that I was an
enemy of myself, which feeling threw me into despair, the depths of
which I do not wish to recall, even now.

I was not only miserably unhappy myself, I made everyone else around me
unhappy, although I did it, not intentionally, but because my
affliction had caused me to lose control of myself.

In this condition, my nerves were strained to the breaking point all
day long, and many a night I can remember crying myself to
sleep--crying purely to relieve that stored-up nervous tension, and f
ailing off to sleep as a result of exhaustion.

As I said before, there were periods of grace when the trouble seemed
almost to vanish and I would be delighted to believe that perhaps it
was gone forever--happy hope! But it was but a delusion, a mirage in
the distance, a new road to lead me astray. The affliction always
returned, as every stammerer knows--returned worse than before. All the
hopes that I would outgrow my trouble, were found to be false hopes.
For me, there was no such thing as outgrowing it and I have since
discovered that after the age of six only one-fifth of one per cent.
ever outgrow the trouble.

Another thing which I always thought peculiar when I was a stammerer
was the fact that I had practically no difficulty in talking to animals
when I was alone with them. I remember very well that we had a large
bulldog called Jim, which I was very fond of. I used to believe that
Jim understood my troubles better than any friend I had, unless it was
Old Sol, our family driving horse.

Jim used to go with me on all my jaunts--I could talk to him by the
hour and never stammer a word. And Old Sol--well, when everything
seemed to be going against me, I used to go out and talk things over
with Old Sol. Somehow he seemed to understand--he used to whinney
softly and rub his nose against my shoulder as if to say, "I
understand, Bennie, I understand!"

Somehow my father had discovered this peculiarity of my
affliction--that is, my ability to talk to animals or when alone.
Something suggested to him that my stammering could be cured, if I
could be kept by myself for several weeks. With this thought in mind,
he suggested that I go on a hunting and fishing trip in the wilds of
the northwest, taking no guide, no companion of any sort, so that there
would be no necessity of my speaking to any human being while I was
gone.

My father's idea was that i