further perfecting his
invention at a little place in New Haven. The first thing that he made
here was shoes, and he used his own house for grinding room, calender
room, and vulcanizing department, and his wife and children helped to
make up the goods. His compound at this time was India rubber,
lampblack, and magnesia, the whole dissolved in turpentine and spread
upon the flannel cloth which served as the lining for the shoes. It
was not long, however, before he discovered that the gum, even treated
this way, became sticky, and then those who had supplied the money for
the furtherance of these experiments, completely discouraged, made up
their minds that they could go no further, and so told the inventor.

[Illustration: CHARLES GOODYEAR.]

He, however, had no mind to stop here in his experiments, but, selling
his furniture and placing his family in a quiet boarding place, he
went to New York, and there, in an attic, helped by a friendly
druggist, continued his experiments. His next step in this line was to
compound the rubber with magnesia and then boil it in quicklime and
water. This appeared to really solve the problem, and he made some
beautiful goods. At once it was noised abroad that India rubber had
been so treated that it lost its stickiness, and he received medals
and testimonials and seemed on the high road to success, till one day
he noticed that a drop of weak acid, falling on the cloth, neutralized
the alkali, and immediately the rubber was soft again. To see this,
with his knowledge of what rubber should do, proved to him at once
that his process was not a successful one. He therefore continued
experimenting, and after preparing his mixtures in his attic in New
York, would walk three miles to the mill of a Mr. Pike, at Greenwich
village, and there try various experiments.

In the line of these, he discovered that rubber, dipped in nitric
acid, formed a surface cure, and he made a great many goods with this
acid cure which were spoken of, and which even received a letter of
commendation from Andrew Jackson.

The constant and varied experiments that Goodyear went through with
affected his health more or less, and at one time he came very near
being suffocated by gas generated in his laboratory. That he did not
die then everybody knows, but he was thrown then into a fever by the
accident and came very near losing his life.

It was there that he formed an acquaintance with Dr. Bradshaw, who was
very mu