By this time, the patience of his friends and his own little fund of money were both exhausted; and, one by one, the relics of his former prosperity, even to his wife’s trinkets, found their way to the pawnbroker.  He was a sanguine man, as inventors need to be, always feeling that he was on the point of succeeding.  The very confidence with which he announced a new conception served at length to close all ears to his solicitations.  In the second year of his investigation he removed his family to the country, and went to New York, in quest of some one who had still a little faith in India-rubber.  His credit was then at so low an ebb that he was obliged to deposit with the landlord a quantity of linen, spun by his excellent wife.  It was never redeemed.  It was sold at auction to pay the first quarter’s rent; and his furniture also would have been seized, but that he had taken the precaution to sell it himself in Philadelphia, and had placed in his cottage articles of too little value to tempt the hardest creditor.

In New York,—­the first resort of the enterprising and the last refuge of the unfortunate,—­he found two old friends; one of whom lent him a room in Gold Street for a laboratory, and the other, a druggist, supplied him with materials on credit.  Again his hopes were flattered by an apparent success.  By boiling his compound of gum and magnesia in quicklime and water, an article was produced which seemed to be all that he could desire.  Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process drew a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835, and were much commended in the newspapers.  Nothing could exceed the smoothness and firmness of the surface of these sheets; nor have they to this day been surpassed in these particulars.  He obtained a patent for the process, manufactured a considerable quantity, sold his product readily, and thought his difficulties were at an end.  In a few weeks his hopes were dashed to the ground.  He found that a drop of weak acid, such as apple-juice or vinegar and water, instantly annihilated the effect of the lime, and made the beautiful surface of his cloth sticky.

Undaunted, he next tried the experiment of mixing quicklime with pure gum.  He tells us that, at this time, he used to prepare a gallon jug of quicklime at his room in Gold Street, and carry it on his shoulder to Greenwich Village, distant three miles, where he had access to horse-power for working his compound.  This experiment, too, was a failure.  The lime in a short time appeared to consume the gum with which it was mixed, leaving a substance that crumbled to pieces.