Many of the older employees of the store still remember him distinctly. He was a tall man, stately, conservative in speech and in manner--your typical successful man of business of that time and generation. Yet these very Macy people will tell you today that while his dignity awed, it did not repress. For with it went a kindliness of manner and of purpose. Nor was he--as some of them were then inclined to believe--devoid of any sense of humor. Mr. James Woods, who is assistant superintendent of delivery in the store today and who has been with it for forty-eight years, recalls many and many a battle royal with "C. B. W." as he still calls his old associate and chief, which they had together as they worked in the delivery rooms of the old Fourteenth Street store, hurling packages at one another and then following up with smart fisticuffs. "In those early days," adds George L. Hammond, who came to the store in 1886 and who is now in its woolen dress-goods department, "I found Mr. Webster a most kindly man, even though taciturn. For instance, one day Mr. Isidor Straus came up to the counter with a man whom he had met upon the floor. They stood talking together. Mr. Straus told the other gentleman that he had recently met a Mr. Cebalos, known at that time as the Cuban Sugar King, and that Mr. Cebalos had spoken to him of having met such a fine gentleman, an American, in France; that this gentleman was evidently a man of education and large means and had said that he was in business in New York. Mr. Cebalos asked Mr. Straus if he had ever known his chance acquaintance in Paris--he was a Mr. Webster, Mr. C. B. Webster. To which Mr. Straus instantly replied: 'Of course I know him. He is the senior member of our firm.' Mr. Cebalos answered: 'What, the senior member of the firm of R. H. Macy & Co.? Why, he never told me that!'" So much for old-fashioned modesty and conservatism. The habit of reticence enclosed many of these older executives of Macy's. They were silent oft-times because they could not forget their vast responsibilities--even when they were away from the store. It is told of one of them that once in the middle of the performance in an uptown theater the thought flashed over him that he had neglected to close his safe--a duty which was never relegated to any subordinate. He arose at once from his seat and hurried down to the Store, brought the night watchman to the doors and strode quickly to the private office: only to find the stout doors of its great strong-box firmly fastened. The idea that he had neglected his duty was a nervous obsession. His was not the training nor the mentality that ever neglected duty.