three
o'clock on Sunday afternoons
There were corner drug stores with huge jars of red , yellow , and green liquids in their windows , very brave and gay ; stationers ' stores , where illustrated weeklies were tacked upon bulletin boards ; barber shops with cigar stands in their vestibules ; sad-looking plumbers ' offices ; cheap restaurants , in whose windows one saw piles of unopened oysters weighted down by cubes of ice , and china pigs and cows knee deep in layers of white beans . At one end of the street McTeague could see the huge power-house of the cable line . Immediately opposite him was a great market ; while farther on , over the chimney stacks of the intervening houses , the glass roof of some huge public baths glittered like crystal in the afternoon sun . Underneath him the branch post-office was opening its doors , as was its custom between two and three o'clock on Sunday afternoons . An acrid odor of ink rose upward to him . Occasionally a cable car passed , trundling heavily , with a strident whirring of jostled glass windows . On week days the street was very lively .