that the aqua fortis merely “cured” the surface of the material, and that only very thin cloth made in this way was durable.  His other goods began to prove worthless, and his promising business came to a sudden and disastrous end.  All his possessions were seized and sold for debt, and once more he was reduced to poverty.  His position was even worse than before, for his family had increased in size, and his aged father also had become dependent upon him for support.

Friends, relatives, and even his wife, all demanded that he should abandon his empty dreams, and turn his attention to something that would yield a support to his family.  Four years of constant failure, added to the unfortunate experience of those who had preceded him, ought to convince him, they said, that he was hoping against hope.  Hitherto his conduct, they said, had been absurd, though they admitted that he was to some extent excused for it by his partial success; but to persist in it would now be criminal.  The inventor was driven to despair, and being a man of tender feelings and ardently devoted to his family, might have yielded to them had he not felt that lie was nearer than ever to the discovery of the secret that had eluded him so long.

Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, making a few rubber articles on his own account.  He hardened his compound by mixing a little powdered sulphur with the gum, or by sprinkling sulphur on the rubber cloth, and drying it in the sun.  He declared that the process had been revealed to him in a dream, but could give no further account of it.  Goodyear was astonished to find that the sulphur cured the India-rubber as thoroughly as the aqua fortis, the principal objection being that the sulphurous odor of the goods was frightful in hot weather.  Hayward’s process was really the same as that employed by Goodyear, the “curing” of the India-rubber being due in each case to the agency of sulphur, the principal difference between them being that Hayward’s goods were dried by the sun, and Goodyear’s with nitric acid.  Hay ward set so small a value upon his discovery that he had readily sold it to his new employer.

[Illustration:  AN AMAZING REVELATION.]

Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties.  It was plain that sulphur was the great controller of India-rubber, for he had proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for most purposes.  The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected to the agency of the sulphur.  He experimented for weeks and months with the most intense eagerness, but the mystery completely baffled him.  His friends urged him to go to work to do something for his family,