am it over the spout of her
tea-kettle, and to press the kitchen fire into his service as far as it
would go. When this failed, he would go to the shops in the vicinity of
Woburn, and beg to be allowed to use the ovens and boilers after working
hours were over. The workmen regarded him as a lunatic, but were too
good-natured to deny him the request. Finally, he induced a bricklayer
to make him an oven, and paid him in mason's aprons of India-rubber. The
oven was a failure. Sometimes it would turn out pieces of perfectly
vulcanized cloth, and again the goods would be charred and ruined.
Goodyear was in despair.

All this time he lived on the charity of his friends. His neighbors
pretended to lend him money, but in reality gave him the means of
keeping his family from starvation. He has declared that all the while
he felt sure he would, before long, be able to pay them back, but they
declared with equal emphasis that, at that time, they never expected to
witness his success. He was yellow and shriveled in face, with a gaunt,
lean figure, and his habit of wearing an India-rubber coat, which was
charred and blackened from his frequent experiments with it, gave him a
wild and singular appearance. People shook their heads solemnly when
they saw him, and said that the mad-house was the proper place for him.

The winter of 1839-40 was long and severe. At the opening of the season,
Mr. Goodyear received a letter from a house in Paris, making him a
handsome offer for the use of his process of curing India-rubber with
aqua fortis. Here was a chance for him to rise out of his misery. A year
before he would have closed with the offer, but since then he had
discovered the effects of sulphur and heat on his compound, and had
passed far beyond the aqua fortis stage. Disappointment and want had not
warped his honesty, and he at once declined to enter into any
arrangements with the French house, informing them that although the
process they desired to purchase was a valuable one, it was about to be
entirely replaced by another which he was then on the point of
perfecting, and which he would gladly sell them as soon as he had
completed it. His friends declared that he was mad to refuse such an
offer; but he replied that nothing would induce him to sell a process
which he knew was about to be rendered worthless by still greater
discoveries.

A few weeks later, a terrible snow-storm passed over the land, one of
the worst that New England