Developing such an interest, self-consciousness will diminish, self-confidence will grow. Gradually, less and less attention will be paid to the petty details of daily existence that formerly gave so much concern. They will be pushed more and more into the background of the mind, will be managed automatically, as it was intended they should be managed. No longer will your indecision be a source of pitying, perhaps amused, comment by your friends. Instead, they will have occasion to comment, with pleased surprise, on the vigour and promptness of decision in all things that has taken the place of the old indecision. One word more: Exactly as hygienic measures are helpful in the cure of indecision in adults, so are they helpful to prevent the development of indecision--and bashfulness--in children. Parents will do well to bear this in mind. But, as in the prevention of selfishness, jealousy, and so forth, reliance on hygienic measures alone is not enough. It is all very well to see that children get plenty of good food, abundant muscular exercise, and much life in the open air. This is excellent and necessary. Also, however, they must be given wise moral training--training that will make it habitual for them to think and act vigourously, to keep their emotions well in hand, to be interested in much besides themselves, and to develop the feeling of self-confidence and the spirit of initiative. Now, let us turn to still another preventable and serious life handicap having its origin in the days of childhood--the handicap of stammering. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 11: "Studies In Psychopathology," 1907, pp. 22-23.] [Footnote 12: J. J. Walsh's "Psychotherapy", p. 736.] STAMMERING VII STAMMERING There lies convenient to my hand at this moment a thin, pamphlet-like volume that tells the story of one of the strangest, among the many singular and tragic blunders which medical science has made in its progress to knowledge. It is a translation from the German of Doctor J. F. Dieffenbach's "Memoir on the Radical Cure of Stuttering." Assuredly, Dieffenbach's "cure" was radical enough, for it consisted in nothing less than the excision of a large, wedge-shaped section from the stammerer's tongue! In this little book, published in 1841, and embellished with several ghastly full-page engravings, is described, with great professional gusto, the first of these terrible operations as performed, without the merciful aid of any anesthetic, on an unhappy boy of thirteen. The result was a "complete success." Says Dieffenbach, writing a few weeks after the operation: "At the present time not the slightest trace of stuttering remains, not the slightest vibration of the muscles of the face, not the most inconsiderable play of the lips. His speech is, throughout, well toned, even, and flowing."