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��Inventors as Afartyrs to Science.
��wife's jewels, found their way to tlie blow, liis family having previously
pawnbroker's. He was a sanguine joined hira in New York, he awoke
man, as inventors need to be, always one morning to discover that he had
feeling that he was on the point of neither an atom of food for them,
��succeeding. The very confidence with which he announced a new con- ception served at length to close all ears to his solicitations. In the sec- ond year of his investigation he moved his family to the country, and went to New York in quest of some oue who had still a little faith in rubber. His credit was then at so low an ebb that he was obliged to de- posit with the landlord a quantity of linen spun by his excellent wife. It was never redeemed. It was sold at auction to pay the first quarter's rent, and his furniture would also have been seized but that he had taken the precaution to sell it himself in Phila- delphia, and had i)laced in his cottage articles of too little value to ten)[)t the hardest creditor. Accident sug-
��nor a cent to buy it with. The pawn-l)i'oker was his only resource. He now became even an object of ridicule, and was regarded as an India-rubber monomaniac. One of his New York friends, having been asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized in the street, replied, — " If you see a man with an India-rub- ber coat on, India-rubber shoes, and India-rubber cap, and in his pocket an India-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that is he. He was in the habit of wearing liis material in every form, with the two-fold view of test- ing and advertising it.
A brief, delusive prosperity occa- sionally relieved the monotony of% misfortune. He received an order from the o-overnment for 150 India-
��gested a process which was a step rubber mail-bags, but they were a toward final success. It was patent- signal failure. The handles dropped ed. A partner with ample capital off, and the rubber fermented. This joined hin. He prepared to manu- totally destroyed his rising business, facture on a grand scale, and engaged p^verythiug he possessed that was a store on Broadway for the sale of salable was sold at auction to pay his his fabrics. In the midst of these debts. He was again penniless and preparations his zeal in experiment- destitute. All his friends now joined ing almost cost him his life. Having in dissuading him from further ex- generated a large quantity of poison- periment. Who had ever touched lu- ous gas in his close room, he was so dia-rubber without loss? Had he a nearly suffocated that it was six right to keep his family in a condition weeks before he recovered any health, so humiliating and painful? There Soon the commercial storm of 1836 were those that would join him in any swept away the entire property of his rational undertaking, but how could partner, and reduced poor Goodyear he expect that any one would be will-
��to his nomal condition of beggary. Beggary it literally was, for he was absolutely dependent upon others for the means of sustaining life. He mentions that soon after this crushing
��ing to throw n)ore money into a bot- tomless pit that had already engulfed millions without result.
He had now reduced himself not merely to poverty, but to isolation. No
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