“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 could rely, one who never failed him.  He received in reply a letter of severe and cutting reproach, inclosing 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.”

He had now reached the lowest ebb of his misery, and a brighter day was in store for him.  Obtaining fifty dollars from a relative, he went to New York, where he succeeded in interesting in his discovery two brothers, William and Emory Rider.  They agreed to advance him a certain sum to support his family and continue his experiments.  By means of this aid he was enabled to keep his family from want in the future, and from that time his experiments never flagged.  Before entire success crowned his efforts, the brothers Rider failed; but he had advanced his experiments so greatly that his brother-in-law, William De Forrest, a rich woolen manufacturer, came to his support, and supplied him with the means to go on with his labors.  Mr. De Forrest’s total advances amounted to forty-six thousand dollars, from which fact the reader may gain some idea of the obstacles overcome by Goodyear in this last stage of his invention.