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 of age, 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 dependants 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 could rely, one who had never failed him.  He received in reply a letter of severe and cutting reproach, enclosing seven dollars, which his friend explained was given only out of pity for his innocent and suffering family.  A stranger, who chanced to be present when this letter arrived, sent them a barrel of flour,—–­a timely and blessed relief.  The next day the family followed on foot the remains of the little child to the grave.

A relation in a distant part of the country, to whom Goodyear revealed his condition, sent him fifty dollars, which enabled him to get to New York.  He had touched bottom.  The worst of his trials were over.  In New York, he had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of two brothers, William Rider and Emory Eider, men of some property and great intelligence, who examined his specimens, listened to his story, believed in him, and agreed to aid him to continue his experiments, and to supply his family until he had rendered his discovery available.  From that time, though he was generally embarrassed in his circumstances, his family never wanted bread, and he was never obliged to suspend his experiments.  Aided by the capital, the sympathy, and the ingenuity of the brothers Rider, he spent a year in New York in the most patient endeavors to overcome the difficulties in heating his compound.  Before he had succeeded, their resources failed.  But he had made such progress in demonstrating the practicability of his process, that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a noted woollen manufacturer, took hold of the project in earnest, and aided him to bring it to perfection.  Once more, however, he was imprisoned for debt.  This event conquered his scruples against availing himself of the benefit of the bankrupt act, which finally delivered him from the danger of arrest.  We should add, however, that, as soon as he began to derive income from his invention, he reassumed his obligations to his old creditors, and discharged them gradually.