The box could either be taken by the purchaser or the clerk would stencil the customer's name and address into the handle, place a triangular packet-post stamp on the box and drop it into a chute beside the counter. It was carried down into the _Packet-Post Conveyor_, which was from seventy-five to one hundred feet below the level of the street, where it landed on a belt-like arrangement moving at the rate of five miles an hour. The action was entirely automatic and the chute was arranged with an automatic shutter which would only open when there was no package immediately below on the moving belt. This precluded the possibility of packages tumbling on top of each other and in this way blocking the conveyor tube. When the package had landed on the conveyor belt it traveled to the nearest _distributor office_, where the post office clerk would take it from the belt and see if it was franked correctly. The stamp was then machine cancelled and after the clerk had noted the address he routed it to the sub-station nearest to the addressee's home. Next he clamped onto the package an automatic metal "rider" which was of a certain height, irrespective of the size of the package. The package with its rider was placed on an express conveyor belt traveling at the rate of 25 miles an hour. This express belt, bearing the package, moved at an even speed, and never stopping, passed numerous sub-stations on the way. At the correct sub-station the rider came against a contact device stretching across the belt at right angles, at a certain height. This contact arrangement closed the circuit of a powerful electromagnet placed in the same line with the contact, a few feet away from the express belt. The electromagnet acted immediately on the metal package (Alohydrolium is a magnetic metal), drawing it in a flash into the sub-station from the belt. If there was another package right behind the one so drawn out, it was handled in the same manner. After the package had arrived at the sub-station it was despatched to its final destination. Another rider was attached to it and the package placed on a local conveyor belt passing by the house to which it was addressed. On arriving at the correct address its rider would strike the contact overhead, which operated the electromagnet, pulling the package into the basement of the house, where it fell on the platform of an electric dumb-waiter. The dumb-waiter started upward automatically and the package was delivered at once. By this method a package could be delivered in the average space of forty minutes from the time of purchase. Some packages could be delivered in a much shorter time and others which had to travel to the city limits took much longer. "How wonderful!" Alice exclaimed after Ralph had explained the system. "It must have taken decades to build such a stupendous system."