ten o'clock
He sees things freshly , as though they had not been seen before , and describes them with singular directness and vividness , not with morbid acuteness , with a large , wholesome joy of life . Nowhere is this more evident than in his insistent use of environment . I recall the passage in which he describes the street in which McTeague lives . He represents that street as it is on Sunday , as it is on working days , as it is in the early dawn when the workmen are going out with pickaxes on their shoulders , as it is at ten o'clock when the women are out marketing among the small shopkeepers , as it is at night when the shop girls are out with the soda fountain tenders and the motor cars dash by full of theater-goers , and the Salvationists sing before the saloon on the corner . In four pages he reproduces in detail the life in a by-street of a great city , the little tragedy of the small shopkeeper . There are many ways of handling environment -- most of them bad . When a young author has very little to say and no story worth telling , he resorts to environment .