"The figure on that card, with the word 'cash' heavily underscored was just one hundred dollars in excess of my minimum," said the manufacturer afterwards, in discussing the incident. "I paused a moment and then said: 'Gentlemen, I mean to accept your offer. You have figured well, as your offer is just sufficient to buy the goods. R. H. Macy & Company have secured this merchandise of unusual quality and I congratulate you.'" At the beginning of this chapter we mentioned another form of the store's buying--where Mahomet goes to the mountain. This, being translated into plain English, means that Macy's must and does maintain elaborate permanent office organizations in Paris, in London, in Belfast and in Berlin. These in turn are but centers for other shopping work--shopping that may lead, as we have already seen, as far as the distant Bagdad. For instance, from his office in the Cité Paradis in Paris, the head of the French-buying organization of the store controls the purchase of all goods for it, not only in France, but in Belgium and Switzerland as well. He virtually combs these busy and ingenious manufacturing nations for their latest specialties; from France, _les derniers cris_ in fashionable gowns, millinery, perfumes and novelties of every description; from Belgium, fine laces and gloves; and from Switzerland, watches. These items, however, are merely typical; there are hundreds of others. A young American woman, of remarkable taste and gifted with a genuine genius for buying, is upon the Paris staff and is engaged practically the entire year round in visiting exhibitions of every sort and variety, in hunting the retail shops, great and small, of the French capital and at all times acting upon her own initiative as a free-lance buyer. A job surely to be coveted by any ambitious young woman who feels that she understands and can translate the constantly changing tastes of her countrywomen into the merchandise needs of a store whose chief task is always to serve them. For reasons that are not necessary to be set down here, the Berlin office of Macy's has been in _statu quo_ for some years past, although it is just now reopening. The London branch is steadily on the search for the clothing, haberdashery and leather specialties which are the pride of the British workman, while from right across the Irish sea, at 13 Donegal Square, North, Belfast, come the fine Irish linens that so long have been a distinguished merchandise feature of the store's stock. So it is, then, that forever and a day, Macy's is engaged in bringing the cream of European merchandise to New York--goods of nearly every kind that can either be made better abroad or cannot be duplicated at all in this country. Importing is indeed a large branch upon the Macy tree.