His stock of money was soon exhausted, his own valuables, and even the trinkets of his wife were pawned, but Goodyear never for an instant thought of giving up the problem which he had set himself to solve. Again he believed he had discovered the secret by boiling the solution of rubber and magnesia in quicklime and water, when he found to his dismay that a drop of the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple, would reduce an apparently fine sheet of rubber to a sticky mass. The first real step in the right direction was made by accident, for, in removing some bronzing from a piece of rubber with aqua fortis, he found that the chemical worked a remarkable change in the rubber, which would now stand a degree of heat that would have melted it before. He called this "curing" India-rubber, and after careful tests, patented the process, secured a partner with capital, rented an old India-rubber works on Staten Island, and set to work, full of hope. But commercial disaster swept away his partner's fortune, and Goodyear could find no one else who would risk his money in so doubtful an enterprise. Indeed, in all America he seemed to be the only man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing anything with India-rubber. His friends regarded him as a lunatic, and especially when he made himself a suit of clothes out of his India-rubber cloth, and wore it on all occasions. One day a man looking for Goodyear asked one of the latter's friends how he would recognize him if he met him. "If you see a man with an India-rubber coat on," was the reply, "India-rubber shoes, India-rubber hat, and in his pocket an India-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that's Goodyear." The description was a good one, for that purse had been without a cent in it for a long time. It was to stay empty for some weary years longer. For he had not yet discovered the secret of making India-rubber permanent, as he found when he tried to fill a contract for a hundred and fifty mail bags ordered by the government. The bags were apparently perfect, but in less than a month began to soften and ferment and were thrown back on his hands. All his property was seized and sold for debt; his family was reduced to the point of starvation, and friends, relatives and even his wife joined in demanding that he abandon this useless quest.