The Voice and Diction of Conversation : Page 78

The whole world sympathizes with a stammerer. And when no one is looking the world probably laughs at his painful antics in innocent revenge for the agony he has caused it. That the Lord, who had ready to hand a teeming range of trials for mankind, should also have found time to invent stammering for a multiplication of man's vicissitudes passes beyond our limited understanding. But there it is, and we cannot help it. However, that anyone not so afflicted should willingly aggravate man's unhappy lot by prefacing his words with a series of a-a-ah-s can only be a tribute to original sin! Anyone who has this terrifying habit, who delays his words, as if he were stammering, by drawling or grunting, should absent himself from society awhile until this speech atrocity is corrected. It ought to be a law of charity that friends must tell a friend who has this fault. It is, sad to say, an affliction as frequent in brilliant and educated people, such as teachers, as it is in lathe operators. I do not know how it can be corrected. But I suggest that the afflicted one absolutely refrain from starting his words until he is ready to push them out in full without any barnacles. If he cannot manage an unbarnacled word and a weighty thought at one and the same time, then he should refrain from weighty thoughts. One simply cannot have a graceful