"Oh, but they must have been handsome," commented Lucy. "They must have looked just like gold slippers. How much did they cost, Grandfather?"
"I don't know, Lucy. I'm not sure that they were intended to be sold. Two years afterward, though, when there were five hundred pairs for sale in Boston, the price was pretty high. I paid five dollars for mine, I remember. These were not gilded, but they were just as thick and unshapely as the first ones were. They were better than nothing, though, when the weather was not too hot nor too cold.
"During the next few years I suppose there were at least a million pairs of rubber shoes brought into this country and sold for four or five dollars a pair. Then, of course, enterprising New Englanders began to think that if people wanted rubber shoes so much, there would be a good deal of profit in manufacturing them. Then rubber companies prospered for a while; but customers soon found that the rubber shoes they bought were spoiled by heat or cold, and every rubber company went rapidly out of existence.
"It was just about this time that Mr. Goodyear sent for me to come to Philadelphia. He was in the jail there, I'm sorry to say, but for no fault of his, and he needed a lawyer's advice. The hardware firm he belonged to had failed, owing thirty thousand dollars; and though he could in no way be blamed for the disaster, on account of our poor debtors' laws he had been sent to prison. In spite of his misfortune, he was not downcast. 'It's unfair, Hobart,' he said; 'but there's a way out. Look into this kettle. That's gum elastic I've been melting. The secret of rubber will pay that thirty thousand dollars and give the world the most important commercial product of the century.'
"I was glad he was so cheerful, for I couldn't give him much encouragement about keeping out of prison. Our laws were unfair, just as he said, and I knew that his creditors were likely to send the poor fellow to prison again and again. And so they did for ten long years. But his faith in rubber never wavered. Just after he had been released the first time, I called on him again. 'Here's the means of good fortune, Hobart,' he cried cheerfully; and he showed me a mass of rubber he was pressing into shape with his wife's rolling-pin."
"I'm afraid there was always more rubber than bread under that rolling pin!" commented Grandmother, just then passing through the room on an errand.
"I'm afraid so," agreed Grandfather. "But, Lucy, your grandmother never had much patience with Mr. Goodyear's experiments. I remonstrated a good many times, myself. 'Goodyear,' said I, when I found him once in a little attic room in New York, boiling his gum with all sorts of chemicals, 'why not give it up? You can't do it without money, and nobody believes in rubber now.'
"'Don't try to discourage me,' he answered. 'I know I shall succeed. What is hidden and unknown and cannot be discovered by scientific research will most likely be discovered by accident; and it will be discovered by the one who applies himself most perseveringly to his task.'
Natives Drying Rubber