re hardly able to believe
that I am the same person who used to be known as "BEN BOGUE'S BOY WHO
STUTTERS."

For today I can talk as freely and fluently as anybody. I do not
hesitate in the least. For years, I have not even known what it is to
grope mentally for a word. I speak in public as well as in private
conversation. I have no difficulty in talking over the telephone and in
fact do not know the difference. In my work, I lecture to students and
am invited to address scientific bodies, societies and educational
gatherings, all of which I can accomplish without the slightest
difficulty.

Today, I can say with Terence, "I am a man and nothing that is human is
alien to me." And I can go a step further and say to those who are
afflicted as I was afflicted: "I have been a stammerer. I know your
troubles, your sorrows, your discouragements. I understand with an
understanding born of a costly experience."

Man or woman, boy or girl, wherever you are, my heart goes out to you.
Whatever your station in life, rich or poor, educated or unlettered,
discouraged and hopeless, or determined and resolute, I send you a
message of hope, a message which, in the words of Dr. Russell R.
Conwell, "has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the thousands of lives I
have been privileged to watch. And the message is this: Neither
heredity nor environment nor any obstacles superimposed by man can keep
you from marching straight through to a cure, provided you are guided
by a firm driving determination and have normal health and
intelligence." To that end I commend to you the succeeding pages of
this volume, where you will find in plain and simple language the
things which I have spent more than thirty years in learning. May these
pages open for you the door to freedom of speech--as they have opened
it for hundreds before you.

PART II

STAMMERING AND STUTTERING

The Causes, Peculiarities, Tendencies and Effects

CHAPTER I

SPEECH DISORDERS DEFINED

In the diagnosis of speech disorders, there are almost as many
different forms of defective utterance as there are cases, all of which
forms, however, divide themselves into a few basic types. These various
disorders might be broadly classified into three classes:

(1)--Those resulting from carelessness in learning to speak;
(2)--Those which are of distinct mental form; and
(3)--Those caused by a physical deformity in the organs of
speech themselves.

R