t from his patents, if we deduct from
his receipts the money spent in further developing his discovery. His
ill-health obliged him to be abstemious, and he had no expensive
tastes. It was only in his laboratory that he was lavish, and there he
was lavish indeed. His friends still smiled at his zeal, or reproached
him for it. It has been only since the mighty growth of the business
in his products that they have acknowledged that he was right and that
they were wrong. They remember him, sick, meagre, and yellow, now
coming to them with a walking-stick of India-rubber, exulting in the
new application of his material, and predicting its general use, while
they objected that his stick had cost him fifty dollars; now running
about among the comb factories, trying to get reluctant men to try
their tools upon hard India-rubber, and producing at length a set of
combs that cost twenty times the price of ivory ones; now shutting
himself up for months, endeavoring to make a sail of India-rubber
fabric, impervious to water, that should never freeze, and to which no
sleet or ice should ever cling; now exhibiting a set of cutlery with
India-rubber handles, or a picture set in an India-rubber frame, or a
book with India-rubber covers, or a watch with an India-rubber case;
now experimenting with India-rubber tiles for floors, which he hoped
to make as brilliant in color as those of mineral, as agreeable to the
tread as carpet, and as durable as an ancient floor of oak. There is
nothing in the history of invention more remarkable than the devotion
of this man to his object. No crusader was ever so devoted to his vow,
no lover to his mistress, as he was to his purpose of showing mankind
what to do with India-rubber. The doorplate of his office was made of
it; his portrait was painted upon and framed with it; his book, as we
have seen, was wholly composed of it; and his mind, by night and day,
was surcharged with it. He never went to sleep without having within
reach writing materials and the means of making a light, so that, if
he should have an idea in the night, he might be able to secure it.
Some of his best ideas, he used to say, were saved to mankind by this
precaution.

It is not well for any man to be thus absorbed in his object. To
Goodyear, whose infirm constitution peculiarly needed repose and
recreation, it was disastrous, and at length fatal. It is well with no
man who does riot play as well as work. Fortunately, we are all