health, as far as New York. On reaching that city they received intelligence of her death. As Mr. Goodyear was unable to continue the journey, they repaired to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he afterward died, as the church bells were ringing, Sunday morning, July 1, 1860. Of nine children, five survived him.
Some of the published biographical sketches of the discoverer convey the idea that he left an insolvent estate. From his surviving son, Prof. William H. Goodyear, we learn that the greater part of the last fifteen years of his father's life was passed in comfortable circumstances; and that his estate, though his affairs were somewhat complicated at the time of his death, was worth several hundred thousand dollars, the greater part of which was ultimately invested profitably in the well-known Goodyear shoe-sewing machine (an invention improved by Charles Goodyear, fils). An effort was made to extend his patent a second time for the benefit of his family. But it was not very difficult for those grown rich out of his discovery to point out improvidence—particularly in his later years—and so, with the cry of "Monopoly," raised in the press, the project was frustrated. The whole tenor of his life shows him to have been a man of most honorable intentions. He gave cheerfully and unsparingly for benevolence when he had the means. Further, it goes almost without saying that he never neglected those who had assisted him, and that he promoted their welfare, and that of his relatives, to the extent of his ability. Palissy, the celebrated rediscoverer of white enameling, knew that the process had been accomplished before. But Charles Goodyear was not in the same position in regard to vulcanization, and his chief merit may, therefore, be said to have been his remarkable faith, in its final accomplishment, which inspired his untiring pursuit of his idea under the most adverse conditions. From France, in Le Caoutchouc et la Gutta Percha, by E. Chapel, comes a note of worthy appreciation and a suggestion which should find echo on this side of the ocean: "Sufficient account has not been taken, in the United States, of the character of this researcher; it is owing to him that we have been able to take so great advantage of caoutchouc, that its employment has become indispensable in medicine, in chemistry, in physics, in electricity—in a word, in all the arts and sciences, in which, in many cases, it permits the realization of progress of the highest importance. We should consider Goodyear one of the benefactors of his race, and must regret that no statue to that end has been raised to this Bernard de Palissy of the New World."
