Mystery Passage

Needless to say, no one could pick out a type of bookstore in this way today. 

No googling allowed!

I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street.   Evening was just closing in and it was raining.  I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight.  Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering.  And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town.  However far I went I found only dingy lodging houses, small tobacconists, hoardings from which posters hung in rags, windowless warehouses, goods stations without trains, and bookshops of the sort that sell The Works of Aristotle.  I never met anyone.  But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty.  I think that was why I attached myself to the queue.