TRIBUTES OF RESPECT. 281 



aged him, and that, as I left the door, I told him to perse- 

 vere, that something important would yet come of his 

 researches, and that when he should be ready I would 

 make a noise about it, as I did in my lectures in Yale 

 College, and by my influence. In March, 1852, being en- 

 gaged in a course of lectures in the city of Washington, 

 Mr. Goodyear arrived with his family, and, by permission, 

 I introduced him to my friend, Thomas Blagden, Esq., and 

 family.* In the course of conversation, Mr. Goodyear 

 addressed me thus : " If it had not been for you, sir, I 

 should long since have been in my grave ; all my relations 

 and friends discouraged me, and you alone sustained me 

 by your opinion and your influence." 



He always and through life placed a high value upon my 

 support of him by a kind influence. While I was deliver- 

 ing my lectures in Washington, 1 made a rapid, and even 

 perilous, journey to New York, to make oath before a 

 court to a certificate which I had given, twelve or fourteen 

 years before, of his discovery of the vulcanization of the 

 rubber 



It will be interesting to my children to know that kind 

 and grateful feelings have been cherished towards their 

 father for many years by some of those who have been his 

 pupils. Dr. Alexander H. Stevens, class of 1807, 

 the celebrated surgeon of New York, in a recent accidental 

 meeting, I believe it was at the Metropolitan in New 

 York, while we were waiting to see the Japanese, re- 

 verted with great warmth to his college life in Yale, and 

 earnestly assured me that it was owing solely to my kind 

 treatment of him, and influence over him, that he perse- 

 vered in obtaining his education in Yale ; that my treat- 

 ment of him was soothing and encouraging ; and, as he 

 said, in language too strong and too commendatory for me 

 to repeat, this was to him the only bright spot in his college 



life. 



* Mrs. Blagden was my niece. 



