process, they would
blister or char.

Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the
neighborhood of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven after
working hours, or of hanging a piece of India-rubber in the "man-hole"
of the boiler. The foremen testify that he was a great plague to them,
and smeared their works with his sticky compound; but, though they all
regarded him as little better than a troublesome lunatic, they all
appear to have helped him very willingly. He frankly confesses that he
lived at this time on charity; for, although _he_ felt confident of
being able to repay the small sums which pity for his family enabled
him to borrow, his neighbors who lent him the money were as far as
possible from expecting payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to
give. One would pay his butcher's bill or his milk bill; another would
send in a barrel of flour; another would take in payment some articles
of the old stock of India-rubber; and some of the farmers allowed his
children to gather sticks in their fields to heat his hillocks of sand
containing masses of sulphurized India-rubber. If the people of New
England were not the most "neighborly" people in the world, his family
must have starved, or he must have given up his experiments. But, with
all the generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick,
hungry, and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness
testifies: "I found (in 1839) that they had not fuel to burn nor food
to eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one day to
another, unless it was sent in to them." We can neither justify nor
condemn their father. Imagine Columbus within sight of the new world,
and his obstinate crew declaring it was only a mirage, and refusing to
row him ashore! Never was mortal man surer that he had a fortune in
his hand, than Charles Goodyear was when he would take a piece of
scorched and dingy India-rubber from his pocket and expound its
marvellous properties to a group of incredulous villagers. Sure also
was he that he was just upon the point of a practicable success. Give
him but an oven, and would he not turn you out fire-proof and
cold-proof India-rubber, as fast as a baker can produce loaves of
bread? Nor was it merely the hope of deliverance from his pecuniary
straits that urged him on. In all the records of his career, we
perceive traces of something nobler than this. His health being always
infirm, he was haunted with the d