Accident suggested his next process, which, though he knew it not, was a step toward his final success.  Except his almost unparalleled perseverance, the most marked trait in the character of this singular man was his love for beautiful forms and colors.  An incongruous garment or decoration upon a member of his family, or anything tawdry or ill-arranged in a room, gave him positive distress.  Accordingly, we always find him endeavoring to decorate his India-rubber fabrics.  It was in bronzing the surface of some India-rubber drapery that the accident happened to which we have referred.  Desiring to remove the bronze from a piece of the drapery, he applied aquafortis for the purpose, which did indeed have the effect desired, but it also discolored the fabric and appeared to spoil it.  He threw away the piece as useless.  Several days after, it occurred to him that he had not sufficiently examined the effect of the aquafortis, and, hurrying to his room, he was fortunate enough to find it again.  A remarkable change appeared to have been made in the India-rubber.  He does not seem to have been aware that aquafortis is two fifths sulphuric acid.  Still less did he ever suspect that the surface of his drapery had really been “vulcanized.”  All he knew was, that India-rubber cloth “cured,” as he termed it, by aquafortis, was incomparably superior to any previously made, and bore a degree of heat that rendered it available for many valuable purposes.

He was again a happy man.  A partner, with ample capital, joined him.  He went to Washington and patented his process.  He showed his specimens to President Jackson, who expressed in writing his approval of them.  Returning to New York, he prepared to manufacture on a great scale, hired the abandoned India-rubber works on Staten Island, and engaged a store in Broadway for the sale of his fabrics.  In the midst of these grand preparations, his zeal in experimenting almost cost him his life.  Having generated a large quantity of poisonous gas in his close room, he was so nearly suffocated that it was six weeks before he recovered his health.  Before he had begun to produce his fabrics in any considerable quantity, the commercial storm of 1836 swept away the entire property of his partner, which put a complete stop to the operations in India-rubber, and reduced poor Goodyear to his normal condition of beggary.  Beggary it literally was; for he was absolutely dependent upon others for the means of sustaining life.  He mentions that, soon after this crushing blow, his family having previously joined him in New York, he awoke one morning to discover that he had neither an atom of food for them, nor a cent to buy it with.  Putting in his pocket an article that he supposed a pawnbroker would value, he set out in the hope of procuring enough money to sustain them for one day.  Before reaching the sign, so familiar to him, of the three Golden Balls, he met a terrible being to a man in his situation,—­a creditor!  Hungry