Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1876 — " Wishing to Know.” [ARTICLE]

" Wishing to Know.”

Charles Marie La Condamine was member of the Academie des Sciences, of the Academie Francaise, of the Hoyal Society of London, and the Academies of Berlin and St. Petersburg. His success in life, in science—everything, in fact—was attributable to his never-ceasing curiosity; at times the cause of much goo. 1 , imbuing him with ardor, and courage, and constancy in the most difficult enterprises: at others being the cause of sore trouble, and at last costing him his life. When he left college he became a volunteer in the army, where, at the siege of Roses, his dominant passion was almost fatal to him at the outset. He had hscended some elevated spot, without there being any need for it, in order to examine the place, and was busy watching through a telescope the working of a battery. He wore a scarlet cloak, which made him an easy target for the bullets and balls whistling around him, without even perceiving the danger he was exposed to. Fortunately he was warned in time. Peace having been proclaimed, his activeness did not brook the slow advancement and monotonous life of a garrison soldier. He was appointed Assistant Chemical Director of the Academie des Sciences. He undertook many journeys in the heart of Africa, always prompted by the same indefatigable craving for “wishing to know.” He made another journey to the equator; and then he traveled in Italy, where again he got into numerous scrapes trying to find out. One day he sees in a fishing village a candle burning before the image of a saint. Upon inquiry the inhabitants tell him that should the lieht be extinguished the spot would immediately be submerged by the sea. “Are you sure of what yod are saying ?” asks La Condamine. The answer beingin the affirmative, he there and then blows it out. The rage of the superstitious people may easily be imagined. With difficulty he is saved from being torn to pieces. His curiosity ought to have stopped here one would say. Naturam expolltu furca, tamen tuque recurret. Attempt to drive nature away by violence, she will still return. He became very infirm at last, and then his master passion was entirely confined to his sight. One day being in the apartment of Mme. de Choiseul, while that lady was writing a letter, he could not withstand the temptation to look over her shoulder. She, noticing him behind her, continued as if nothing had happened. Suddenly Condamine catches sight of the words: “ I should tell you more about it, if M. De la Condamine were not behind me looking over my shoulder.” “Ah Madame!” cries the accused. “I assure you I was not looking.” At the execution of Damiens no one could drive him away from the scaffold. But at last he was taken ill. A young surgeon had proposed to the Academie some new mode of operation in the disease Condamine was suffering from, and during the whole time the experiment lasted the patient was more concerned with watching the handling of the instruments than with his own sufferings. In vain did Esculapius implore him to keep quiet. “ I want to see,” he repeated. The wounds being bound up and the patient left alone on a fair way toward recovery, he could not lie still; in spite of the injunction not to move, he persisted in taking off the bandages to find out the effects; and when his friends burst into the room and found him dying, he shouted out lustily: “lam glad "I inquired into this. It has had the effect I anticipated; that’s a clever young man.”— Tinsley's Magazine.