This Langheimer has a singular history. He was a convict in this prison when Charles Dickens visited it during his first visit to this country.
The rule of the institution is solitary confinement. The genial novelist's heart was so wrung with pity for the poor creatures he saw there condemned to years of absolute silence and loneliness, that he protested vehemently against the system in his "American Notes." He took the case of this wretched German as his text. Probably thousands of kind eyes, all over the world, have filled with tears at the story of Langheimer.
The authorities of the prison and the defenders of the system, however, tell with great gusto the sequel of the story. It seems that Langheimer, as soon as he was released for one offence, committed another, and has been brought back again and again, until forty years of his life have been passed within these walls. Finally, not being under any charge, he voluntarily came back and begged for admission.
An impartial observer would be apt to think that Dickens was right, and that the system cannot be the best one that fits a man to commit more crimes, or which made poor Langheimer unable to find a home in society outside of a jail.
The American people are only beginning to learn that the use of prisons is to reform wicked men as well as to punish them.
TWO NOTABLE RHETORICAL FIGURES.
Daniel Webster is credited with one of the most vivid figures in the rhetoric of American eloquence. The orator was eulogizing the financial genius of Hamilton, and startled the audience by the sentence, uttered in his impressive tone,—
"He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet."
The audience rose to their feet,–it was a public dinner,–and greeted the sentiment with three rousing cheers.