ee or four other doctors, laboured for some hours to restore
animation; but she only sighed once. After all that time, she was
obliged to be borne, stiff and stark, to her father's house. She was his
only child, and but 17 years old. He has been nearly dead since, and all
Lausanne has been full of the story. I was down by the lake, near the
place, last night; and a boatman _acted_ to me the whole scene:
depositing himself finally on a heap of stones, to represent the body."

With M. Verdeil, physician to the prison and vice-president of the
council of health, introduced by Mr. Haldimand, there had already been
much communication; and I could give nothing more characteristic of
Dickens than his reference to this, and other similar matters in which
his interest was strongly moved during his first weeks at Lausanne.[113]

"Some years ago, when they set about reforming the prison at Lausanne,
they turned their attention, in a correspondence of republican feeling,
to America; and taking the Philadelphian system for granted, adopted it.
Terrible fits, new phases of mental affection, and horrible madness,
among the prisoners, were very soon the result; and attained to such an
alarming height, that M. Verdeil, in his public capacity, began to
report against the system, and went on reporting and working against it
until he formed a party who were determined not to have it, and caused
it to be abolished--except in cases where the imprisonment does not
exceed ten months in the whole. It is remarkable that in his notes of
the different cases, there is _every effect_ I mentioned as having
observed myself at Philadelphia; even down to those contained in the
description of the man who had been there thirteen years, and who
_picked his hands_ so much as he talked. He has only recently, he says,
read the _American Notes_; but he is so much struck by the perfect
coincidence that he intends to republish some extracts from his own
notes, side by side with these passages of mine translated into French.
I went with him over the prison the other day. It is wonderfully well
arranged for a continental jail, and in perfect order. The sentences
however, or some of them, are very terrible. I saw one man sent there
for murder under circumstances of mitigation--for 30 years. Upon the
silent social system all the time! They weave, and plait straw, and make
shoes, small articles of turnery and carpentry, and little common wooden
clocks. But the sent