I say to you--and I want to emphasize this--that the first and foremost ambition of your child who stammers, is to be free from it. The greatest day of his life will be the day when he can talk without that fear, without sticking and stumbling and hesitating over his utterances. I say to you again--if that boy or girl of yours could stop their stammering, he or she would stop it this very instant. They would never stammer again--if they were endowed with the power to stop. But they are not. That is the very seed of their trouble--their inability to control the actions of the vocal organs so as to produce normal speech. They have lost the control of those organs and they cannot of their own volition re-establish that control. The third belief, that stammering cannot be cured, is so easily demolished that I shall devote but little time to it. It, like all false beliefs, has its foundation in ignorance. The mother or father who knows the facts, knows also that stammering can be cured. You may not know whether your boy or girl can be cured, but you are offered a way to find out--definitely and positively, by describing your child's case on my Diagnosis Blank and returning it to me for a thorough Diagnosis. Put your beliefs to one side--whatever they may be. You can get the facts if you want them. You can learn the truth if you will. Truth is better than false beliefs and facts are better than superstition or hearsay, which in every case leads to misery, dejection and despair--a ruined life where a successful, happy and contented life might have been--except for stammering. You have a well-defined responsibility to your son or daughter. You have a duty to perform--that is, to equip that boy or girl of yours to go out into the world as well equipped as any other boy or girl--and that means equipped with perfect speech--without which they will be too greatly handicapped to fully succeed. CHAPTER IX THE DANGERS OF DELAY In many of the cases which have come to my attention in the past many years, the stammerer or stutterer has been afflicted with a malady more difficult to cure than stammering, viz.: The Habit of Procrastination. "Oh, I will wait a little while," says the stammerer. "A little while can't make any difference!" And then the little while grows into a big while and the big while grows into a year and the year grows into a lifetime and he is still stammering. Several months ago, an old man, stooped in stature, care-worn of countenance and halting of step, presented himself to me for diagnosis. His face was drawn into long, hard lines. His eyes shifted from side to side, glancing furtively here and there. In his trembling hands was a worn old derby which he turned about nervously as he stood there talking. The nervousness, the trembling of the hands, the drawn face, the shifting eyes--all this was explained by the story that this man told as he sat there beside the desk.