le 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."

When he was less than thirty, Dickens was invited to visit Scotland, and
there he received his first great national tribute. A public banquet was
given him in Edinburgh, and he was much sought after and entertained. Up
to this time he had never seen the United States; he decided now to
visit this country and meet his American readers face to face.

He landed at Boston accompanied by his wife, in 1842, and visited many
of the greater cities of the Eastern states. Everywhere he was counted
the guest of the nation, and the four months of his stay were one
continual welcome. Unfortunately, however, Dickens had taken a dislike
to American ways, and this dislike appear