Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

“ The sun shines brighter than it has for months or years. Every one seems much more pleasant and agreeable. Things which the day before seemed totally impossible seem now to come within their range of accomplishment. Such is the feeling of the confirmed stutterer or stammerer during the time of this pseudo-freedom from his speech disorder.
In his own mind, the sufferer is quite sure that his malady has disappeared over-night, like a bad dream and that freedom of speech has been bestowed upon him as a gift from the gods on high. ”

“ In the first place, a stammerer cannot forget his difficulty—who can say that he would be cured if he did? You might as well say to a man holding a hot poker, "If you will only forget that the poker is hot, it will be cool." It takes something more than forgetfulness to cure stammering.
The belief held by both my parents and myself that I would outgrow my difficulty was one of the gravest mistakes we ever made. Had I followed the advice of others who believed in the outgrowing theory it eventually would have caused me to become a confirmed stammerer, entirely beyond hope of cure. ”

“ At this time I knew nothing of the underlying principles of speech and any effort which I made to stop my stammering was merely a crude, misdirected attempt which naturally had no chances for success.
I learned that prizes will never cure stammering. I found out too, something I have never since forgotten: that the man, woman or child who stammers needs no inducement to cause him to desire to be cured, because the change from his condition as a stammerer to that of a nonstammerer is of more inducement to the sufferer than all the money you could offer him. ”

“ CHAPTER XIII WHERE DOES STAMMERING LEAD?
In answering the question: "Where Does Stammering Lead?" nothing truer can be found than the words of a man who has stammered himself:
"What pen can depict the woefulness, the intensified suffering of the inveterate stammerer, confirmed, stereotyped in a malady seemingly worse than death? Are the afflictions, mental and physical, of the pelted, brow-beaten, down-trodden stutterer imaginary? Nonsense! There is not a word of truth in the idea. His sufferings all the time, day in and day out, at home and abroad, are real—intense—purgatorial. ”

“ I know enough about human nature to know that all you want is to be cured—and you understand that to be cured you must co-operate with me to that end. I can cure your stammering only with your co-operation—just as a music teacher can make a pianist of you only with your co-operative and sincere effort. ”

“ David F. Newton, himself a stammerer for forty years, speak of stammering and stuttering and its effects. And Charles Kingsley, a noted English divine and author who stammered, paints the stammerer's future in words of experience that no stammerer should ever forget:
"The stammerer's life is a life of misery, growing with his growth and deepening as his knowledge of life and his aspirations deepen. One comfort he has, truly, that his life will not be a long one. Some may smile at this assertion; let them think for themselves. How many old people have they ever heard stammer! ”

“ By the application of the Bogue Unit Method, I can eradicate the cause of your trouble at its very source, and re-establish normal co-ordination between your brain and the muscles of speech, removing every trace of that "mental expectancy" which you call "fear-of-failure."
I can show you how to place your articulation under perfect control, how to make the formation of words an easy process involving no apparent mental effort or noticeable physical exertion.
I can teach you how to produce any sound or combination of sounds, how to make every word an easy word and every sound an easy sound. ”

“ I had now tried upwards of fifteen different methods for the cure of my stammering. I had tried the physician; the surgeon; the elocution teacher; the hypnotic specialist; the osteopath; a clairvoyant; a mail-order scheme; the world's greatest speech specialist—so-called, and several other things. My parents had spent hundreds of dollars of money trying to have me cured. They had spared no effort, stopped at no cost. And yet I now stammered worse than I had ever stammered before. Everything I had tried had been a worthless failure. ”

“ The congenial home-life at the Institute, the minute attention to the wants of the students, the care given to women and children, the solicitude for those who are ill or who for any reason need special attention—this is but the reflection of an ideal—that ideal is to make the Bogue Institute, not only in instruction and results, but in every way, just what I would have liked to have been able to find when I was searching for a cure for stammering, more than twenty-five years ago. ”

“ For this is the home of perfect speech. Success is in the air. Every step I take counteracts the tendency to fear and worry and strain. I know what the stammerer needs. I know the things that need to be done to quiet the hyper-nervous case. I know what to do to banish that intense self-consciousness and make the student self-forgetful. These things have been learned by experience. And these gained-by-experience methods start the student in the right way from the very first hour. ”

“ Should anyone ask that question, I could point to instances in my own experience that would prove that almost every undesirable condition of human existence may be the result of stammering. I have seen young men who are business failures, dejected, hopeless, drifting along, men who in early years were intellectual giants, and who before their death were mere children in mental power, because they allowed stammering to destroy every valuable faculty they possessed. ”

“ Truly may it be said of the stammering child at this period, that "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries." ”

“ Thus you will irritate him, and bring to his heart that sickening sensation that he is totally helpless in the grip of his speech disorder and yet—"Oh, why will they not understand?"
Like the first belief, this belief that the child could stop if he wanted to, is based upon ignorance. No mother or father who has ever experienced the sensation of fear that grips the heart of the stammering child when he tries to speak, will say that he could stop if he would. ”

“ With the return of the trouble, the bodily and mental reaction are almost too great for the human mechanism to withstand. Hope seems to be a word which has been lost from the life of the stammerer. The fear of failure returns with an overwhelming force mocking the sufferer with the thought of "Oh, how I deceived you!!"; the mental strain is exceedingly great—so great, in fact, that it seems as if the breaking point has almost been reached. The nervous condition is alarming, the sufferer noting in himself an inability to work, to play, to study or even to sit still. ”

“ I wish I could paint in the sky, in letters of fire, the truth that "Stammering cannot be outgrown," because this, of all things, is the most frequent pitfall of the stammerer, his greatest delusion and one of the most prolific causes of continued suffering. ”

“ The humiliation and disgrace which the stammering child must undergo on the way to school, in the school-yard and on the way home again, is a tremendous force in the life of the youngster—a force which may seriously impede his mental development, his physical welfare and his progress in school. ”

“ The man who suggests that it is possible to cure stammering by outgrowing it is doing a great injustice to the stammerer, because he is giving him a false hope—in fact the most futile hope that any stammerer ever had. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Value of Moral Influence in the Cure of Stammering: In speaking of the necessity for good health, both physical and mental, before the eradication of stammering can take place, we must not overlook a few words about one particular type of derelict—the will-less or sometimes wilful individual who persists in indulging in dissipation of every kind, the individual who, with cocksure attitude and haughty sneer, laughs in the face of experience and insists that "it will not bother him." ”

“ To the stammerer's question: "When should I begin treatment for my stammering?" and "At what stage will I stand the best chance of being most quickly cured?" there is but one answer. The time for the stammerer or stutterer to begin treatment for his malady is the day he discovers his stammering or stuttering. The best chance for being quickly cured exists today. ”

“ To take another example of the association of ideas or the co-ordination of mental images necessary to the production of speech, let us suppose, for instance, that the child has been in the habit of petting the dog and hearing him called by name "Dot" at the same time. Now, if the dog be placed out of the child's sight and yet in a position where the hand of the child can reach and pet him in a familiar way, this sense of touch, like the sense of sight, will set up a train of thought that results in the child making his childish attempt to speak the name of the dog "Dot." ”

“ No stammerer should attempt to be cured by any correspondence method. When the decision has been made to have a speech defect removed, the sufferer should place himself under the care of a reputable institution, the past record of which entitles it to consideration. Correspondence cures are a waste of money, a waste of time and finally leave the stammerer with the firm-founded belief that his trouble is absolutely incurable, when, as a matter of fact, he may have a comparatively simple form of stuttering or stammering which could be quickly eradicated by the proper institutional treatment. ”

“ Under Mother Bogue's direction, the Institute is a busy, happy, cheerful and well-ordered home for the big and happy family that it houses.
Music is here for those who wish to play. Games and books and magazines for those who would thus entertain themselves and others. We are acquainted with the truth that "all work makes Jack a dull boy—and Jill a dull girl"—and wholesome and worth-while amusements and diversions are provided for all ages and all occasions. These amusements are for those who wish them—those who do not can always find rest and quiet in their own rooms. ”

“ Probably the most harmful and oft-repeated bit of advice ever given to a stammerer or stutterer is that which says, "Oh, don't bother about it—you will soon outgrow the trouble!" It is the most harmful because it is palpably untrue. It is so oft-repeated because the person giving the advice knows nothing whatever about the cause of stammering and just as little about its progress or treatment. ”

“ From the nature of the impediment—lack of co-ordination between the brain and the organs of speech—stammering cannot be outgrown—no more so than the desire to eat or to talk or to sleep.
Back of that statement, there is a very sound scientific reason that explains why stammering cannot be outgrown. Stammering is destructive. It tears down but cannot build up. Every time the stammerer attempts to speak and fails, the failure tears out a certain amount of his power-of-will. ”

“ When it is remembered that nearly a dozen more or less common speech disorders can be named, almost in one breath, and that some of these disorders may pass through four or five successive stages, it will be seen that an expert diagnosis and report is almost a necessity to the stammerer or stutterer who would have reliable and authoritative information about his speech disorder.
The stammerer or stutterer who voluntarily remains in the dark, who is satisfied with gross ignorance of his trouble, is surely not on the road to freedom of speech. ”

“ I will say in behalf of this hypnotic stammer doctor, however, that he was following distinguished precedent in attempting to cure stammering by hypnotism. German professors in particular have been especially zealous in following out this line of endeavor and many of them have written volumes on the subject only to end up with the conclusion (in their own minds, at least) that it is a failure. Hypnotism may be said to be a condition where the will of the subject is entirely dormant and his every act and thought controlled by the mind of the hypnotist. ”