relics of his better days disappeared.  Another friend loaned him one hundred dollars, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the owners gave him permission to use as far as he could.  He contrived in this way to manufacture enough of his “cured” cloth, which sold readily, to enable him to keep his family from starvation.  He made repeated efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near him.  There had been money enough lost in such experiments, they said, and they were determined to risk no more.

Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear.  His friends regarded him as a monomaniac.  He not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of advertising it.  He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied:  “If you see a man with an India-rubber coat on, India-rubber shoes, an India-rubber cap, and in his pocket an India-rubber purse, with not a cent in it, that is Goodyear.”

In September, 1836, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway.  A friend having loaned him a small sum of money, he went to Roxbury, taking with him some of his best specimens.  Although the Roxbury Company had gone down with such a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the process in this country, was still firm in his faith that India-rubber would at some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends.  He welcomed Mr. Goodyear cordially, and allowed him to use the abandoned works of the company for his experiments.  The result was that Goodyear succeeded in making slides and cloths of India-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet been seen in America, that the hopes of the friends of India-rubber were raised to a high point.  Offers to purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand dollars.  He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile upon him.

His success was but temporary, however.  He obtained an order from the General Government for one hundred and fifty India-rubber mail-bags, which he succeeded in producing, and as they came out smooth, highly polished, hard, well shaped, and entirely impervious to moisture, he was delighted, and summoned his friends to inspect and admire them.  All who saw them pronounced them a perfect success; but, alas! in a single month they began to soften and ferment, and finally became useless.  Poor Goodyear’s hopes were dashed to the ground.  It was found