His coat did not impress the public favorably, and
it served to confirm the opinion that he was laboring under a mania.
In the midst of his first disheartening experiments with sulphur, he
had an opportunity of escaping at once from his troubles. A house in
Paris made him an advantageous offer for the use of his aquafortis
process. From the abyss of his misery the honest man promptly replied,
that that process, valuable as it was, was about to be superseded by a
new method, which he was then perfecting, and as soon as he had
developed it sufficiently he should be glad to close with their
offers. Can we wonder that his neighbors thought him mad?
It was just after declining the French proposal that he endured his
worst extremity of want and humiliation. It was in the winter of
1839--40. One of those long and terrible snow-storms for which New
England is noted had been raging for many hours, and he awoke one
morning to find his little cottage half buried in snow, the storm
still continuing, and in his house not an atom of fuel nor a morsel of
food. His children were very young, and he was himself sick and
feeble.
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