and ruby burgundy, would endue their
liberal dispenser with irresistible attractions,
as also with indisputable virtues. Next to
the maxim "Give good wine,"—perhaps on
an equality with it,—the rule for social
advancement in England is, "Be a fluent
speaker." Instead of a, selection of choice
vintages—or rather conjointly with them, if
you can—establish, somewhere at the back
of your tongue and in close proximity to
your windpipe, an inexhaustible reservoir of
syllables, words, and sentences. Acquire the
art of curling and frizzing bald, worn-out
wigs of grisly-grey speech, into juvenile
locks of novel phraseology. Be ready to
apply all sorts of crimping-irons and
pomatum to The happiest moment of my life.
Keep Unaccustomed as I am to public
speaking in papillotes, ready to be
unfurled after dinner into elastic and glistening
tresses. So shall you rise from vice to chair,
from common-councilman to mayor, from
guardian to governor, from justice of the
peace to member of parliament, from M.P. to
lord of the treasury, first or last. The gift of
the gab is the choicest endowment that a
fairy godmother can bestow on her pet. If
pearls and roses do but flow from the lips, all
the rest is sure to work well.

But imagine an aspirant addressing his
audience thus: "La-la-ladies and gen-gen-
gentlemen, I ri-ri-rise to pro-pro-propose a
toast, which you will re-re-receive with ac-
ac-acclamation." No prospect of gratified
ambition can await an unhappy orator like
this. The very waiters would be tempted to
interrupt him with "He-he-he-hear!" and
"B-b-b-b-bravo!" The attendant vocalists
would illustrate his speech not with an echo
song or a laughing chorus, but more
appropriately with a stuttering catch—if such a
catch exist. The toast-master himself would
imbibe the infection, and utter his deep-toned
announcements convulsively in jerks, and
spurts.

The worst of it is that, in general, the
more a man stammers, the more he will.
There are persons in whose presence
stammerers are sure to stammer worse, as there
are people in whose company you speak a
foreign language less fluently than with
others. Like almost all who are afflicted
with infirmities from which the majority of
men are free, stammerers are painfully
susceptible of ridicule, and resent keenly
anything which seems to them intended as a
mockery of their misfortune. Two
stammerers, ignorant of each other's peculiarity,
met. A disjointed reply was given to a broken
address. The bystanders laughed; the
interlocutors got into a rage, each believing
that the other was insulting him; and the
dialogue would have been abruptly
terminated by blows, had not one of the audience
come forward with an explanation. There is
a floating rumour of some one having, on
some occasion, maliciously assembled a party
of stammerers around a supper-table; and
that the victims of the plot, when they
discovered the trick, were near tossing their
hospitable entertainer out of window—which
he was not very far from deserving.

There are various forms of impeded
speech, or dyslalies, learnedly speaking;
stammering is an idiopathic dyslaly, that is, a
difficulty of a special nature. According to
a medical man who had been a stammerer,
but who cured himself, stammering is a nervous
affection or spasm of the organs of
respiration, its effect being to check
the action of the will on those organs.
Stammering ceases when the spasmodic fit is over,
and respiration is regularly performed. He
states that, in the different stages of
stammering, it may be stopped by making a
strong inspiration, or by drawing in the
breath forcibly: which causes the disorderly
movements of the organs of respiration to
cease, and regulates them by the cerebral
influence of the will. By this simple
proceeding—which was not his own discovery,
but had been indicated to him by Dr. Lindt,
of Berne—he cured himself, at the age of
twenty, of a most decided and confirmed
habit of stammering. He believes, however,
that his recovery was aided by gymnastic
exercises, which he practised with considerable
assiduity, and which would derive
their efficacy from augmenting the action of
the brain upon the whole muscular system.
All other modes of treatment, he asserts, are
only empiric, because they are based on an
inaccurate explanation of the phenomenon
they are intended to cure. Such methods
have succeeded, only because they controlled
the function of respiration; though their
advocates may not have been aware of it.

Stammering is scarcely perceptible in early
childhood, but reveals itself as the age of
thirteen or fourteen approaches. At that
time its intensity is proportioned to the
susceptibility of the patient and the development
of his intelligence, his wants, and his
desires. It diminishes during maturer life,
in proportion as the character becomes calm
and staid, to decrease still more, or to cease
entirely, as old age advances. At a variable
epoch of closing babyhood, namely, when the
vocal apparatus and the mental education
are sufficiently complete to open relations
with the external world, the existence of
stammering manifests itself in a way not to
be mistaken. Its intensity augments with
the increase of years and the growth of
the passions. Stammering then rises as a
barrier by which the sufferer feels that the
world without is separated from the world
within him, and has often a most unhappy
effect on his disposition. Seeing in his
infirmity nothing but a source of embarrassment,
his very fears contribute not a little
to increase his hesitation. Concentrating
his impressions within his own breast, he
becomes taciturn, watchful, and acutely