about six o'clock
This bookshop , which does business under the unusual name `` Parnassus at Home , '' is housed in one of the comfortable old brown-stone dwellings which have been the joy of several generations of plumbers and cockroaches . The owner of the business has been at pains to remodel the house to make it a more suitable shrine for his trade , which deals entirely in second-hand volumes . There is no second-hand bookshop in the world more worthy of respect . It was about six o'clock of a cold November evening , with gusts of rain splattering upon the pavement , when a young man proceeded uncertainly along Gissing Street , stopping now and then to look at shop windows as though doubtful of his way . At the warm and shining face of a French rotisserie he halted to compare the number enamelled on the transom with a memorandum in his hand . Then he pushed on for a few minutes , at last reaching the address he sought . Over the entrance his eye was caught by the sign : PARNASSUS AT HOME R. AND H. MIFFLIN BOOKLOVERS WELCOME !