is empty!

CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON'T LIKE IT

I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of
being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to
me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.
A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation,
quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems
wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But
none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind
in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.

Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in
Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the
last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the
river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a
crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the
tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun
with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of
a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the
squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and
the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago,
in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as
they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time,
with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion's.

Murdstone and Grinby's trade was among a good many kinds of people, but
an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain
packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there
were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies.
I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of
this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine
them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse
and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be
pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put
upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work
was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.

There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was
established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see
me, when he chose to stand up on the bott