titude of this one man, now feeble
in health, the only dependence of a young family, a bankrupt in
business, starting out to seek success in a field in which so many had
found only ruin. He was convinced in his own mind that he would master
the secret, while his friends were equally sure that he would but
increase his difficulties. The firm of which he had been a member had
surrendered all their property to their creditors; but they still owed
thirty thousand dollars, and immediately upon his return from New York,
after his visit to the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for
debt, and though not actually thrown in jail, was compelled to take up
his residence within prison limits.

Strong in the conviction before named, that he was the man of all others
to discover the secret of controlling India-rubber, he at once began his
experiments. This was in the winter of 1834-35. The gum had fallen in
price to five cents per pound, and, poor as he was, he had no difficulty
in procuring a sufficient quantity to begin with. By melting and working
the gum thoroughly, and by rolling it upon a stone table with a
rolling-pin, he succeeded in producing sheets of India-rubber which
seemed to him to possess the properties which those of Mr. Chaffee had
lacked. He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested
in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at
first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the
fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes
away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the
heat. His doubts were more than realized. The warm weather completely
ruined them, reducing them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was
glad to throw them away.

The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure,
and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear's schemes; but
the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to
discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the
mixing of the gum with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured
some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on
cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded
in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that
became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.

It now occurred to him that there must be som