He frankly confesses that he
lived at this time on charity; for, although _he_ felt confident of
being able to repay the small sums which pity for his family enabled
him to borrow, his neighbors who lent him the money were as far as
possible from expecting payment. Pretending to lend, they meant to
give. One would pay his butcher's bill or his milk bill; another would
send in a barrel of flour; another would take in payment some articles
of the old stock of India-rubber; and some of the farmers allowed his
children to gather sticks in their fields to heat his hillocks of sand
containing masses of sulphurized India-rubber. If the people of New
England were not the most "neighborly" people in the world, his family
must have starved, or he must have given up his experiments. But, with
all the generosity of his neighbors, his children were often sick,
hungry, and cold, without medicine, food, or fuel. One witness
testifies: "I found (in 1839) that they had not fuel to burn nor food
to eat, and did not know where to get a morsel of food from one day to
another, unless it was sent in to them.
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