These and a hundred other questions, born of nervousness and fear, I asked myself morning after morning.  And day after day, as the hours dragged by, I would wonder, “Will this day never end?  Will I never get out of this?”

Such was my life in school.  And such is the daily life of thousands of boys and hundreds of girls—­a life of dread, of constant fear, of endless worry and unceasing nervousness.

But, as I look back at the boys and girls who helped to make life miserable for me in school, I feel for them only kindness.  I bear no malice.  They did no more than their fathers and mothers, many of them, would have done.  They little realized what they were doing.  They had no intention to do me personal injury, though there is no question in my mind but that they made my trouble worse.  They did not know how terribly they were punishing me.  They saw in my affliction only fun, while I saw in it—­only misery.

CHAPTER II

MY FIRST ATTEMPT TO BE CURED

I can remember very clearly the positive fear which always accompanied a visit to our friends or neighbors, or the advent of visitors at my home.  Many a time I did not have what I desired to eat because I was afraid to ask for it.  When I did ask, every eye was turned on me, and the looks of the strangers, with now and then a half-suppressed smile, worked me up to a nervous state that was almost hysterical, causing me to stutter worse than at any other time.

At one time—­I do not remember what the occasion was—­a number of people had come to visit us.  A large table had been set and loaded with good things.  We sat down, the many dishes were passed around the table, as was the custom at our home, and I said not a word.  But before long the first helping was gone—­a hungry boy soon cleans his plate—­and I was about to ask for more when I bethought myself.  “Please pass—­” I could never do it—­“p” was one of the hard sounds for me.  “Please pass—­” No, I couldn’t do it.  So busying myself with the things that were near at hand and helping myself to those things which came my way, I made out the meal—­ but I got up from the table hungry and with a deeper consciousness of the awfulness of my affliction.  Slowly it began to dawn on me that as long as I stammered I was doomed to do without much of the world’s goods.  I began to see that although I might for a time sit at the World’s Table of Good Things in Life I could hope to have little save that which someone passed on to me gratuitously.

As long as I was at home with my parents, life went along fairly well.  They understood my difficulty, they sympathized with me, and they looked at my trouble in the same light as myself—­as an affliction much to be regretted.  At home I was not required to do anything which would embarrass me or cause me to become highly excited because of my straining to talk, but on the other hand I was permitted to do things which I could do well, without talking to any one.