orts is long and striking. The
second volume of his book is wholly occupied with that catalogue. He
lived to see his material applied to nearly five hundred uses, to give
employment in England, France, Germany, and the United States to sixty
thousand persons, who annually produced merchandise of the value of
eight millions of dollars. A man does much who only founds a new kind
of industry; and he does more when that industry gives value to a
commodity that before was nearly valueless. But we should greatly
undervalue the labors of Charles Goodyear, if we regarded them only as
opening a new source of wealth; for there have been found many uses of
India-rubber, as prepared by him, which have an importance far
superior to their commercial value. Art, science, and humanity are
indebted to him for a material which serves the purposes of them all,
and serves them as no other known material could.

Some of our readers have been out on the picket line during the war.
They know what it is to stand motionless in a wet and miry rifle-pit,
in the chilling rain of a Southern winter's night. Protected by
India-rubber boots, blanket, and cap, the picket man performs in
comparative comfort a duty which, without that protection, would make
him a cowering and shivering wretch, and plant in his bones a latent
rheumatism to be the torment of his old age. Goodyear's India-rubber
enables him to come in from his pit as dry as he was when he went into
it, and he comes in to lie down with an India-rubber blanket between
him and the damp earth. If he is wounded, it is an India-rubber
stretcher, or an ambulance provided with India-rubber springs, that
gives him least pain on his way to the hospital, where, if his wound
is serious, a water-bed of India-rubber gives ease to his mangled
frame, and enables him to endure the wearing tedium of an unchanged
posture. Bandages and supporters of India-rubber avail him much when
first he begins to hobble about his ward. A piece of India-rubber at
the end of his crutch lessens the jar and the noise of his motions,
and a cushion of India-rubber is comfortable to his armpit. The
springs which close the hospital door, the bands which exclude the
drafts from doors and windows, his pocket comb and cup and thimble,
are of the same material. From jars thermetically closed with
India-rubber he receives the fresh fruit that is so exquisitely
delicious to a fevered mouth. The instrument case of his surgeon and
the st