In the first two of these stories one may see most clearly the principle that underlay almost all of Dickens's work. He was never content merely to tell an interesting story. He wrote with a purpose. In _Oliver Twist_ that purpose was, first, to better the poorhouse system, and second, to show that even in the lowest and wickedest paths of life (the life wherein lived Fagin with his pupils in crime and Bill Sikes the brutal burglar) there could yet be found, as in the case of poor Nancy, real kindness and sacrifice. In _Nicholas Nickleby_ the purpose was to show what terrible wrongs were done to children in country schools, numbers of which at that time were managed by men almost as cruel and inhuman as was Squeers in the story. It is good to learn that, as a result of this novel, an end was made of many such boys' schools. True artist as he was, Dickens seldom wrote without having in his mind the thought of showing some defect in the law, or some wrong condition of affairs which might be righted. No one could read _Pickwick Papers_ or _Little Dorrit_ without realizing how much wrong and misery was caused by the law which made it possible to throw a man into prison for debt. Nor can one read _Bleak House_ without seeing that the legal system which robbed quaint Miss Flite of her mind and kept poor Richard Carstone from his fortune till the fortune itself had disappeared, was a very wrong legal system indeed. Often, too, Dickens's stories are, in a sense, sermons against very human sins. In _The Old Curiosity Shop_ it is the sin of gambling which brings about the death of Little Nell. In _Great Expectations_ it is the sin of pride which Pip has to fight. In _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the evil and folly of selfishness is what Dickens had in mind. With his increasing wealth, Dickens had, of course, changed his manner of life. He lived part of the time in the country near London, in Brighton, in Dover, and in France and Italy. He liked best, however, a little English watering place called Broadstairs--a tiny fishing village, built on a cliff, with the sea rolling and dashing beneath it. In such a place he felt that he could write best, but he greatly missed his London friends. He used to say that being without them was "like losing his arms and legs." The first great grief of his life came to him at this time, in the death of his wife's sister, Mary Hogarth, a gentle, lovable girl of seventeen. No sorrow ever touched him as this did. "After she died," he wrote years afterward, "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of quiet happiness, so that I never lay down at night without a hope of the vision coming back." Hers was the character he drew in Little Nell in _The Old Curiosity Shop_. When he came to the part of the story which tells of Little Nell's death, he could scarcely write the chapter. When he ended it he said, "It seems as though dear Mary died but yesterday."