He had the secret at last,
but nobody would believe him. He had worn out even the most
sanguine of his friends. "That such indifference to this
discovery, and many incidents attending it, could have existed in
an intelligent and benevolent community," wrote Goodyear later,
"can only be accounted for by existing circumstances in that
community The great losses that had been sustained in the
manufacture of gum-elastic: the length of time the inventor had
spent in what appeared to them to be entirely fruitless efforts
to accomplish anything with it; added to his recent misfortunes
and disappointments, all conspired, with his utter destitution,
to produce a state of things as unfavorable to the promulgation
of the discovery as can well be imagined. He, however, felt in
duty bound to beg in earnest, if need be, sooner than that the
discovery should be lost to the world and to himself. . . . How
he subsisted at this period charity alone can tell, for it is as
well to call things by their right names; and it is little else
than charity when the lender looks upon what he parts with as a
gift. The pawning or selling some relic of better days or some
article of necessity was a frequent expedient. His library had
long since disappeared, but shortly after the discovery of this
process, he collected and sold at auction the schoolbooks of his
children, which brought him the trifling sum of five dollars;
small as the amount was, it enabled him to proceed.
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