six o'clock
And always , too , on Saturday , the tenth from the last row of the De Luxe Cinematograph , Broadway 's Best , Orchestra Chairs , fifty cents ; Last Ten Rows , thirty-five . The give of velvet-upholstered chairs , perfumed darkness , and any old love story moving across it to the ecstatic ache of Gertie Slayback 's high young heart . On a Saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the six-o'clock closing of Hoffheimer 's Fourteenth Street Emporium , Miss Slayback , whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy , emerged from the Bargain-Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus , taking the place of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store adjoining , her gaze , something even frantic in it , sifting the passing crowd . At six o'clock Fourteenth Street pours up from its basements , down from its lofts , and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores , shows , and arcades , in a great homeward torrent -- a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the Subway , the Elevated , and the surface car , and then spreads thinly into the least pretentious of the city 's homes -- the five flights up , the two rooms rear , and the third floor back . Standing there , this eager tide of the Fourteenth Street Emporium , thus released by the six-o'clock flood-gates , flowed past Miss Slayback . White-nosed , low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold vanity-cases . Older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a yard-stick ; young men still impatient of their clerkship .