PART III
It was only a short drive to the court house, and Lucy, with her grandparents, was in her seat promptly at ten o'clock. It was the little girl's first visit to a court room; and the sight of the judges in their gowns and the other solemn-looking officials was strange to her. But she had eyes mostly for two people—Mr. Goodyear and the great Webster. She expected to know Webster, for she had seen many pictures of him; but on the drive over she had asked her grandfather how she should recognize Mr. Goodyear.
"I'll tell you," he replied, "what one of Goodyear's acquaintances once said in answer to a similar question: 'If you meet a man who has on an India rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and carries an India rubber purse without a cent in it, that is he.'"
Though Lucy had been amused at the description without expecting to profit by it, she now pressed her grandfather's arm and asked excitedly:
"Is that Mr. Goodyear—that man with the rubber cap and the rubber vest?" indicating a tall, rather thin, kindly, but keen-eyed man who was talking earnestly at the front of the room.
"Yes, it is. And see, there come Mr. Webster and the judges!"
Silence now settled over the court, and Lucy watched and listened eagerly. The formalities of opening were quickly over. It was announced that the counsel for Mr. Day having spoken previously, the court would listen to that for Mr. Goodyear.
Then slowly and with dignity the great Webster stood up to make what proved to be his last speech in any court room. To Lucy and to many another who looked for the first time upon the most eloquent orator of the century, he was a handsome, scholarly man, with conviction behind every word. Others, however, like Lawyer Hobart, who had known Webster in the earlier days, before he had experienced the humiliation of wide-spread public distrust and the bitterness of repudiated friendships, felt that the once sturdy frame had weakened and that in the depths of those dark eyes the fire of righteous resentment burned less fiercely. But, though crushed in spirit, the great man was still keen and invincible in intellect; and the calm vigor of his mind that morning immortalized in human annals the rugged honesty, the sublime patience of the inventor who, despite discouragement, despite temptation, never stepped aside from his high purpose of bestowing a great good upon mankind.
Mr. Webster made a long speech, during the technical parts of which, even though Lucy knew that she was listening to the greatest orator in the country, her attention wandered in spite of herself. But, young as she was, she appreciated the straightforward and convincing argument and could follow easily its main points.
"Whatever may be Mr. Goodyear's claims," declared Mr. Webster early in his speech, "to the great invention now spread out to the ends of the earth and known to all the world, this record shows, other records show, everybody knows that he is a man of inquisitive, ingenious, laborious mind."
Then Webster summarized the history of Goodyear's long struggle, referring first to the days when India rubber was useless in weather that was either very hot or very cold.
"I well remember," he asserted, "that I had some experience in this matter myself. A friend in New York sent me a very fine cloak of India rubber and a hat of the same material. I did not succeed very well with them. I took the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It stood very well by itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many persons passing by thought that they saw on the porch the farmer of Marshfield."
Next the speaker reminded his hearers of the present improvements in such articles, all due to the perseverance of his client, and made a prophecy which our day is rapidly fulfilling:
"I look to the time when ships that traverse the ocean will have India rubber sails, when the sheathing of ships will be composed of this metallic vegetable production. I see, or think I see, thousands of other uses to which this extraordinary product is to be applied."
Then with delicate irony the great lawyer attacked the argument of Mr. Choate. "Those observations are all very eloquent and very pathetic, but they have one drawback. Nothing is beautiful that is not true. The invention exists. Everybody knows and understands it, and everybody connected in former times with the manufacture of India rubber has been astonished and surprised at it.
Daniel Webster
"If Charles Goodyear did not make this discovery, who did make it? They do not meet Goodyear's claim by setting up a distinct claim of anybody else. They attempt to prove that he was not the inventor by little shreds and patches of testimony. We want to know the name and the habitation and the location of this man upon the face of the globe who invented vulcanized rubber, if it be not he who now sits before us."
"Well," queried Grandmother on the drive home, "will Goodyear win, I wonder?"
"It's a peculiar case," returned her husband. "Day's in the wrong, I know. But I wish Goodyear had had the vision of the sulphur himself instead of paying Hayward for it."
"But he paid for Hayward's patent," objected Grandmother.
"Yes, luckily. And Webster never pleaded better. It will come out right, I think."
"Of course Goodyear will win," decided Lucy to herself without knowing she was prejudiced. But aloud she asked, "When will the judge decide, Grandfather?"
"Oh, no one can say," was the reply. "Probably not for some weeks, anyway."
It proved to be six whole months, however, before the decision was rendered. Lucy's visit was almost at an end when one day in September Grandfather came in with the newspaper. "Well, here's good news for Goodyear," he exclaimed. "Hear this." And he read aloud the article which concluded with these words:
"It is due to Mr. Goodyear to say that I am entirely satisfied that he is the original inventor of the process of vulcanizing rubber as stated in his bill; and that he is entitled not only to the relief which he asks, but to all the merits and benefits of that discovery."
"I wonder how much money Goodyear had to pay for his victory," commented Grandmother.
"Oh, Webster will make money. Of course Goodyear won't have to pay it all, for several rubber firms united with him against Day to protect their own interests. The talk among the lawyers when I came away was that Webster would get somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five thousand dollars. I don't believe Goodyear even in these last years has made so much as that above his expenses. But he's generosity itself when he has anything to give. What do you suppose he's sent to Mr. Webster for a present?"
"Oh, I don't know. He's so unpractical that he'd give his house away if some one wanted it," answered Grandmother, whose own good judgment could not be denied.
"I think you're a little severe," answered her husband. "But you won't be surprised to know that he's sent to Marshfield that handsome thoroughbred that he drove Webster to the court house with, because Webster admired the animal so much."
"Just exactly like him!" was the response. "He'll probably wish some day he had the money that colt would bring."
Lucy did not go to Trenton again for eight years. On her next visit, strangely enough, Grandfather's household was again talking of the beloved, unpractical dreamer, who by this time had sacrificed his life in the interests of humanity. For Mr. Goodyear had come to the end of his useful, honored, but difficult career. In spite of his triumphant success, his health had been permanently broken by hard work and worry, and his last years had not been entirely free from the occasional threatenings of poverty.
Indeed, by an unlucky circumstance, again his misfortune but not his fault, he was thrown once more for a short time into a debtors' prison when he was visiting France on a business trip. But the friends who knew him pitied him, trusted him, and honored him to the end; and though Lucy Hobart is now almost seventy-eight years old and has seen most of the prominent Americans of the later nineteenth century, she remembers no one who worked harder or suffered more for the good of humanity than the undaunted Goodyear who insisted, "If it is to be done, it must be done and it will be done. Somebody will yet thank me for it."