c modesty, to his friends,
especially his religious friends. His inventive work was his
religion, and was pervaded and animated by religious faith
and devotion. He felt like an apostle commissioned for that
work; and he said to his niece and her husband, who went,
with his approbation and sympathy, as missionaries of the
Gospel to Asia, that he was God's missionary as truly as
they were."

Nothing more true. The demand for the raw gum, almost created by him,
is introducing abundance and developing industry in the regions which
produce it. As the culture of cotton seems the predestined means of
improving Africa, so the gathering of caoutchouc may procure for the
inhabitants of the equatorial regions of both continents such of the
blessings of civilization as they are capable of appropriating.

An attempt was made last winter to procure an act of Congress
extending the vulcanizing patent for a further period of seven years,
for the benefit of the creditors and the family of the inventor. The
petition seemed reasonable. The very low tariff paid by the
manufacturers could have no perceptible effect upon the price of
articles, and the extension would provide a competence for a worthy
family who had claims upon the gratitude of the nation, if not upon
its justice. The manufacturers generally favored the extension, since
the patent protected them, in the deranged condition of our currency,
from the competition of the foreign manufacturer, who pays low wages
and enjoys a sound currency. The extension of the patent would have
harmed no one, and would have been an advantage to the general
interests of the trade. The son of the inventor, too, in whose name
the petition was offered, had spent his whole life in assisting his
father, and had a fair claim upon the consideration of Congress. But
the same unscrupulous and remorseless men who had plundered poor
Goodyear living, hastened to Washington to oppose the petition of his
family. A cry of "monopoly" was raised in the newspapers to which they
had access. The presence in Washington of Mrs. Goodyear, one of the
most retiring of women, and of her son, a singularly modest young man,
who were aided by one friend and one professional agent, was denounced
as "a powerful lobby, male and female," who, having despoiled the
public of "twenty millions," were boring Congress for a grant of
twenty millions more,--all to be wrung from an India-rubber-consumin