His credit was
then at so low an ebb that he was obliged to deposit with the landlord
a quantity of linen, spun by his excellent wife. It was never
redeemed. It was sold at auction to pay the first quarter's rent; and
his furniture also would have been seized, but that he had taken the
precaution to sell it himself in Philadelphia, and had placed in his
cottage articles of too little value to tempt the hardest creditor.
In New York,--the first resort of the enterprising and the last refuge
of the unfortunate,--he found two old friends; one of whom lent him a
room in Gold Street for a laboratory, and the other, a druggist,
supplied him with materials on credit. Again his hopes were flattered
by an apparent success. By boiling his compound of gum and magnesia in
quicklime and water, an article was produced which seemed to be all
that he could desire. Some sheets of India-rubber made by this process
drew a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835, and were
much commended in the newspapers. Nothing could exceed the smoothness
and firmness of the surface of these sheets; nor have they to this day
been surpassed in these particulars.
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