Ex-Stammerers

Jovial, deep-voiced, sixtyish J. Stanley Smith, a Philadelphia lawyer, called his garrulous group to order in the Penn Athletic Club one night last week. It was the 17th anniversary banquet of his exclusive Kingsley Club, restricted to stammerers. The program: speeches.

Stammering afflicts some 1,000,000 U. S. citizens, is difficult to cure because it usually springs from emotional maladjustment. A stammerer until he was 30, Lawyer Smith was impressed by the observation that stammerers have no trouble singing. One day when he heard Clergyman-Novelist Charles Kingsley, a stammerer, preach and sing without a hitch, he had an idea. Stammerer Smith cured himself, formed the Kingsley Club, enrolled Philadelphians and New Yorkers (mostly businessmen) and set out to cure them of stammering. He gave them deep breathing exercises and "inspiration." had them pronounce words slowly and rhythmically to the beat of a metronome. Then he stood them before an audience to talk. His method worked so well that today his club has 350 members, many of them now ex-stammerers.

Most famed contemporary stammerer is King George VI, * whose private teacher, Lionel Logue, is a crony of Lawyer Smith's. Logue has spent many hours coaching the King, used to sit near him to encourage him at all speechmaking functions. Unlike a commoner, King George cannot practice before an audience.

Last week in Philadelphia some 50 members of the Kingsley Club rose to their feet, spoke their pieces. Half-a-dozen took an extreme test before a radio microphone. Not a speaker faltered. Recited Philip Fairstone, 15, a high-school student: / try the teacher's patience, I start the pupils roaring; I break up the monotony Of classes that are boring. I am a stammerer.

To Philip Fairstone, who began to stammer at 6 because hewas made to write with his right hand instead of his left, went the J. Stanley Smith trophy for most progress toward stammerless speech.

* Famed stammerers of the past: Aesop, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Vergil, Erasmus, Darwin.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.