"He would toast a lump of rubber over the kitchen fire sometimes an hour, sometimes a whole day; he would hold rubber against the steaming nose of the tea-kettle; he would put a batch of it into the oven of the cook stove and bake it, sometimes two hours, sometimes six. Indeed he would often sit up till long past midnight to watch his baking pans.
Kitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments
"Often he begged his friends in a Woburn factory to lend their oven for his rubber; and they, considering his experiments useless but harmless, would grant his request. Day after day, however, the truth eluded him; and day after day food for his family grew scarcer and scarcer. He pawned everything he could spare, even his children's school books.
"At last one morning after a heavy snow storm, with the secret almost within his grasp, he awoke to find that there was not one particle of food in his house nor one penny in his purse. Besides, he was sicker than most people are when they decide to stay in bed till they feel better. But he had a wife and four children that must be fed. He got up and stumbled through the drifts for nearly five miles, so tired and hungry that many times he almost fainted.
"Luckily, the friend he went to see proved a real friend, and lent him money enough to support his family and keep on with his experiments during those winter days. But though with this assistance he found out just the details he needed to know for vulcanizing the rubber, ill-health and poverty, instead of growing less, increased with the certainty of his discovery. He was constantly troubled with dyspepsia. He was so deeply in debt that people had no faith in him. They remembered the rubber shoes and the mail bags; but they forgot the splendid courage that had never accepted defeat. As so often happens, Goodyear was a genius without the power of persuasion. He had to wait for his discoveries to be his mouth-piece.
"But his waiting time was his testing time and proved his honesty and his single-heartedness. A French concern offered to pay for the privilege of using his first important discovery—that rubber could be cured by nitric acid—his acid-gas treatment, he called it. What a temptation that offer was, Lucy, it is impossible to realize; but Goodyear was too honest to sell a half truth for a truth, and he wrote to France that he was almost in the possession of a greater secret which he would gladly sell when he had learned it all.
"Just a little money now stood between Goodyear and assured success; and the quest for a paltry fifty dollars, which would pay his fare to New York and provide for his family during his absence, took him through the darkest days of his life.
"He thought of a friend in Boston who might be willing to lend the money. So, having prevailed upon a Woburn shop keeper to give his family credit for a while, he set out to walk the ten miles to Boston on his pitiful errand. But the friend (perhaps I ought to call him by another name) refused the loan; and, worse luck, while Goodyear was still in Boston, he was sent once more to prison for those debts so long ago forced upon him. His father somehow brought influence to bear for a release; and then Goodyear spent a week tramping about Boston streets, inviting this man and that to lend him a little money, sleeping and eating the while at a small hotel. But every one turned him only a deaf ear; and when the hotel bill came, he had to leave in disgrace.