With this idea firmly in his mind he began a more intensive cultivation of the fields closer at hand. Some of the establishments of New York that later were to develop already were in their beginnings. There was that smart New Englander up at Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue--that man Macy, whose store already was beginning to be the talk of the town. Nathan Straus thought that he would go up and see Rowland H. Macy. And one of the oldest employees of the store still recalls seeing him come into the place, for the first time in his life, on a Saint Patrick's Day--it probably was March 17, 1874--with a paper package under his arm which contained a couple of fine porcelain plates. Macy was a good prospect. For one thing, remember that he bought as well as sold for cash, and for cash alone. Credit played little or no part in his fortunes. New York had refused him credit when first he came to her and he had learned to do without it. Macy was not alone a good prospect from that point of view but he was, as we have already seen--a man constantly seeking novelty. Straus and his porcelain plates interested him immensely. And the upshot of that first call was the assignment of a space in the basement of the store, about twenty-five by one hundred feet in all, which L. Straus & Sons rented and owned. That was not a common custom at that time, although a little later it became a very popular one, and, I think, prevails to a slight extent even in these days. The Straus experiment in the basement of the Macy store paved the way. It having succeeded remarkably well within a short time after its inception, other and similar departments were established elsewhere; at R. H. White's, in Boston, at John Wanamaker's, in Philadelphia, at Wechsler & Abraham's, in Brooklyn, and in a Chicago store which long since passed from existence. Here, after all, was perhaps the real incarnation of the department-store in America, as we know it today, and as it is distinguished from the dry-goods store of other days which, as natural auxiliaries and corollaries to its business, had long since added to the mere selling of dress-goods that of hosiery, boots and shoes, underclothing, ribbons, hats and other _finesse_, both of women's and of men's apparel. We have seen long since the versatile Miss Getchell adding groceries to Macy's departments--and then for a time withdrawing them--afterwards toys, which were never withdrawn. Even then the department-store idea was gradually being born; with the establishment of the Straus crockery store in the basement of the downtown Macy's it came into the fine flower of its youth.