read of dying before he had reached a
point in his discoveries where other men, influenced by ordinary
motives, could render them available.

By the time that he had exhausted the patience of the foremen of the
works near Woburn, he had come to the conclusion that an oven was the
proper means of applying heat to his compound. An oven he forthwith
determined to build. Having obtained the use of a corner of a factory
yard, his aged father, two of his brothers, his little son, and
himself sallied forth, with pickaxe and shovels, to begin the work:
and when they had done all that unskilled labor could effect towards
it, he induced a mason to complete it, and paid him in bricklayers'
aprons made of aqua-fortized India-rubber. This first oven was a
tantalizing failure. The heat was neither uniform nor controllable.
Some of the pieces of India-rubber would come out so perfectly "cured"
as to demonstrate the utility of his discovery; but others, prepared
in precisely the same manner, as far as he could discern, were
spoiled, either by blistering or charring. He was puzzled and
distressed beyond description; and no single voice consoled or
encouraged him. Out of the first piece of cloth which he succeeded in
vulcanizing he had a coat made for himself, which was not an
ornamental garment in its best estate; but, to prove to the
unbelievers that it would stand fire, he brought it so often in
contact with hot stoves, that at last it presented an exceedingly
dingy appearance. His coat did not impress the public favorably, and
it served to confirm the opinion that he was laboring under a mania.

In the midst of his first disheartening experiments with sulphur, he
had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. A house in
Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of his aquafortis
process. From the abyss of his misery the honest man promptly replied,
that that process, valuable as it was, was about to be superseded by a
new method, which he was then perfecting, and as soon as he had
developed it sufficiently he should be glad to close with their
offers. Can we wonder that his neighbors thought him mad?

It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured his
worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the winter of
1839--40. One of those long and terrible snow-storms for which New
England is noted had been raging for many hours, and he awoke one
morning to find his little cottage half buried in s