a portion of white lead in the compound greatly
facilitated the operation and improved the result; and when he had
learned these facts, it still required costly and laborious experiments
to devise the best methods of compounding his ingredients, the best
proportions, the best mode of heating, the proper duration of the
heating, and the various useful effects that could be produced by
varying the proportions and the degree of heat. He tells us that many
times when, by exhausting every resource, he had prepared a quantity of
his compound for heating, it was spoiled because he could not, with his
inadequate apparatus, apply the heat soon enough.

"To New York, then, he directed his thoughts. Merely to get there cost
him a severer and a longer effort than men in general are capable of
making. First he walked to Boston, ten miles distant, where he hoped to
borrow from an old acquaintance fifty dollars, with which to provide for
his family and pay his fare to New York. He not only failed in this, but
he was arrested for debt and thrown into prison. Even in prison, while
his father was negotiating to procure his release, he labored to
interest men of capital in his discovery, and made proposals for
founding a factory in Boston. Having obtained his liberty, he went to a
hotel, and spent a week in vain efforts to effect a small loan. Saturday
night came, and with it his hotel bill, which he had no means of
discharging. In an agony of shame and anxiety, he went to a friend and
entreated the sum of five dollars to enable him to return home. He was
met with a point blank refusal. In the deepest dejection, he walked the
streets till late in the night, and strayed at length, almost beside
himself, to Cambridge, where he ventured to call upon a friend and ask
shelter for the night. He was hospitably entertained, and the next
morning walked wearily home, penniless and despairing. At the door of
his house a member of his family met him with the news that his youngest
child, two years old, whom he had left in perfect health, was dying. In
a few hours he had in his house a dead child, but not the means of
burying it, and five living dependents without a morsel of food to give
them. A storekeeper near by had promised to supply the family, but,
discouraged by the unforeseen length of the father's absence, he had
that day refused to trust them further. In these terrible circumstances,
he applied to a friend upon whose generosity he knew he co