e condition may be noticed in another unconscious or reflex
action--breathing. The moment you become conscious of an attempt to
breathe regularly, breathing becomes difficult, restricted, irregular,
whereas this same action, when unconscious, is thoroughly regular and
even.

In the average or normal person who has learned to talk correctly,
speaking should be practically an unconscious process. It should not be
necessary to make a conscious effort to form words, nor should a normal
individual be conscious of the energy necessary to create a word or the
muscular movements necessary to its formation and expression.

This will explain why the stutterer or stammerer can talk without
difficulty to animals or when alone--there is no self-consciousness--no
conscious effort--no thinking of what is being done.

Another of the peculiarities of stammering is that the stammerer in
many cases seems to be able to talk perfectly in concert. This has long
baffled the investigator in this field, no reason being assignable for
this ability to talk in connection with others. The baffling element
has been this--that the investigator has assumed that the stammerer
talked well in concert, whereas a very careful scientist would have
discovered the stammerer to be a fraction of a second or a part of a
syllable behind the others.

You have doubtless been in church at some time when you were not
entirely familiar with the hymn being sung, yet by lagging a note or
two behind the rest, you could sing the song, to all appearances being
right along with the others.

When you talk over the long-distance telephone, the voice seems
instantly to reach the party at the other end of the line, yet we know
that a period of time has had to elapse to allow the voice waves to
move along the telephone wire and reach the other end. The elapse of
time has been too slight to be noted by the average human mind and the
transmission seems instantaneous. This is what happens in the case of
the stammerer who seems able to talk in concert--he is merely a
syllable or part of a syllable behind the rest, all the while giving
the impression nevertheless, that he is talking just as they are.

There are many other individual peculiarities which can be described by
almost every stammerer. These different peculiarities are more numerous
than the cases of stammering and it would be useless to attempt to
discuss them in detail. I will take up only two as being typical of
d