Probably the entire history of inventions cannot furnish an instance of more intense self-sacrificing, entire self-immolation to the elucidation of a great scientific principle, than is shown in the persistent labors of Mr. Goodyear while in pursuit of the crowning discovery of the age. Let us read the glowing account of his toils and disappointments, his defeats and victories, as given by the Commissioner from whom we have previously quoted. “From the first moment that the conception entered his mind until his complete success—embracing a period of from sixteen to eighteen years—he applied himself unceasingly and enthusiastically to its perfection and to its introduction into use, in every form that his fruitful genius could devise. So intensely were his faculties concentrated upon it that he seems to have been incapable of thought or of action upon any other subject. He had no other occupation, was inspired by no other hope, cherished no other ambition. He carried continually about his person a piece of India-rubber, and into the ears of all who would listen he poured incessantly the story of his experiments and the glowing language of his prophecies. He was, according to the witnesses, completely absorbed by it, both by day and night, pursuing it with untiring energy and with almost superhuman perseverance. Not only were the powers of his mind and body thus ardently devoted to the invention and its introduction into use, but every dollar he possessed or could command through the resources of his credit, or the influences of friendship, was uncalculatingly cast into that seething cauldron of experiment which was allowed no repose. The very bed on which his wife slept, and the linen that covered his table, were seized and sold to pay his board, and we see him, with his stricken household, following in the funeral of his child on foot, because he had no means with which to hire a carriage. His family had to endure privations almost surpassing belief, being frequently without an article of food in their house, or fuel in the coldest weather—and indeed it is said that they could not have lived through the winter of 1839, but for the kind offices of a few charitable friends. They are represented as gathering sticks in the woods and on the edges of the highways, with which to cook their meals, and digging the potatoes of their little garden before they were half grown, while one of his hungry children, in a spirit worthy of his father, is heard expressing his thanks that this much had been spared to them. We often find him arrested and incarcerated in the debtor’s prison, but even amid its gloom his vision of the future never grew dim, his faith in his ultimate triumph never faltered. Undismayed by discomfitures and sorrows which might well have broken the stoutest spirit, his language everywhere, and under all circumstances, was that of encouragement and of a profound conviction of final success. Not only in the United States