specially needed, influencing some mind for every work or calling....  Were he to refrain from expressing his views thus briefly, he would ever feel that he had done violence to his sentiments.”

This is modestly said, but his friends assure us that he felt it earnestly and habitually.  It was, indeed, this steadfast conviction of the possibility of attaining his object, and his religious devotion to it, that constituted his capital in his new business.  He had little knowledge of chemistry, and an aversion to complicated calculations.  He was a ruined man; for, after a long struggle with misfortune, the firm of A. Goodyear and Sons had surrendered their all to their creditors, and still owed thirty thousand dollars.  He had a family, and his health was not robust.  Upon returning home after conversing with the agent of the Roxbury Company, he was arrested for debt, and compelled to reside within the prison limits.  He melted his first pound of India-rubber while he was living within those limits, and struggling to keep out of the jail itself.  Thus he began his experiments in circumstances as little favorable as can be imagined.  There were only two things in his favor.  One was his conviction that India-rubber could be subjugated, and that he was the man destined to subjugate it.  The other was, that, India-rubber having fallen to its old price, he could continue his labors as long as he could raise five cents and procure access to a fire.  The very odium in which business-men held India-rubber, though it long retarded his final triumph, placed an abundance of the native gum within the means even of an inmate of the debtor’s prison, in which he often was during the whole period of his experimenting.  He was seldom out of jail a whole year from 1835 to 1841, and never out of danger of arrest.

In a small house in Philadelphia, in the winter of 1834—­35, he began his investigations.  He melted his gum by the domestic fire, kneaded it with his own hands, spread it upon a marble slab, and rolled it with a rolling-pin.  A prospect of success flattered him from the first and lured him on.  He was soon able to produce sheets of India-rubber which appeared as firm as those imported, and which tempted a friend to advance him a sum of money sufficient to enable him to manufacture several hundred pairs of shoes.  He succeeded in embossing his shoes in various patterns, which gave them a novel and elegant appearance.  Mindful, however, of the disasters of the Roxbury Company, he had the prudence to store his shoes until the summer.  The hot days of June reduced them all to soft and stinking paste.  His friend was discouraged, and refused him further aid.  For his own part, such experiences as this, though they dashed his spirits for a while, stimulated him to new efforts.