And in this branch romance oftimes dwelleth. The picture of the caravan toiling up the banks of the Euphrates is no idle dream at all. Upon the world maps of the merchandise executives of Macy's it is an outpost of trading as unsentimental as Lawrence, Massachusetts, or Norristown, Pennsylvania. Yet the buyer who goes to the old Bagdad from the new has a real task set for him. Obviously he must not only have a knowledge of his market and a keen sense of values, but he must also be a resourceful traveler; a merchant who can adapt himself to the ways of the people with whom he trades. His judgment, discretion and integrity must be above reproach, for often he is far away and out of touch with headquarters for long months at a time. Take such a buying trip as the Oriental rug-buyer of Macy's recently made into the Orient and back again. It lasted eight months. In that time he traveled more than thirty thousand miles--by steamship, motor-car, railroad, horseback and on foot. The rug region of Persia is a long way, indeed, from Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street and to reach it he went to London and Paris, then to Venice, where he took a steamer for Bombay, upon the west coast of India. Thence he proceeded by another steamer up the Persian Gulf to the city of Basra, which is at the confluence of those two ancient rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates--between which the earliest Biblical history is supposed to have been made. Basra today is one of the world's great rug-shipping centers. Then he went to Bagdad itself--the fabled city of Haroun-el-Raschid and the Arabian Nights--from whence he started into the very heart of Persia. He was not content, however, to remain idly there and let the rugs be brought to him. He went much further. Through Kermanshah, the city whose name is given to the rugs which come from Kerman, seven hundred miles to the southeast, to Hamadan, one of the main marketing-centers of the rug-producing country--that, briefly, was the beginning of his itinerary. He went carefully through Persia, picking up rugs here and there, having them baled and sent to Bagdad by mules or camels and shipped thence to New York; and he established warehouses to which rug-dealers brought their wares. The light of the Red Star shone in the East. Roads in Persia leave much indeed to be desired, and as the chief means of travel, aside from beasts of burden, is by Ford cars, a buyer who covers much of its territory has a rather unenviable job. Gasoline in those parts costs four dollars a gallon, while if you hire a jitney you pay for it at the rate of a dollar a mile.