Some time after trying my experiment with the eastern schools, I
saw the advertisement of a professor from Chicago saying that he
would be at Fort Wayne, Indiana, (which was 40 miles from my
home), for a week.

He was there. So was I. But to my sorrow. I paid him twenty
dollars for which he taught me a few simple breathing and vocal
exercises, most of which I already knew by heart, having been
drilled in them time and again. This fellow was like so many
others who claimed to cure stammering--he was in the business just
because there were stammerers to cure, and not because he knew
anything about it. He treated the effects of the trouble and did
not attempt to remove the cause. The fact of the matter is, I
doubt whether he knew anything about the cause.

Then one Sunday while reading a Cincinnati Sunday newspaper, I ran
across an advertisement of a School of Elocution, in which was the
statement, "Stammering Positively Cured!" Whenever I saw a sign
"Vocal Culture" I became interested, so I clipped the
advertisement, corresponded with the school and not many Sundays
later, being able to secure excursion rates to Cincinnati, I made
the trip and prepared to begin my work.

The cost of the course was only fifty dollars and I thought I
would he getting cured mighty cheap if I succeeded. So I gave this
school a "whirl" with the idea of going hack home in a short time
cured--to the surprise of my family and friends. But I was doomed
to disappointment. I took the twenty lessons, but went home
stammering as badly as ever. You can imagine how I felt as the Big