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.

The time was coming, however, when it would be "Sink or Swim" for
me, since it would not be many years until a sense of duty, if
nothing else, would send me out to make my own way. This time
comes to all boys. It was soon to be MY task to face the world--to
make a living for myself. And this was a thing which, strangely
enough for a boy of my age, I began to think about. I had some