On his return trip to New York this buyer went back once again to India and north as far as the border of Afghanistan to investigate the condition of the rug market in that region. At ancient Siringar, in the Vale of Cashmere, he bought marvelous felt rugs made in the mysterious land of Thibet. And yet all the way throughout this long journey he was buying goods for only one department of the great store that he represented. It used to be impressive to me when the hardware dealer of the small town in which I was reared would boast of the number of items that he held upon the shelves of his own center of merchandising. There were more than two thousand of them! He told me that with such an evident pride, as a Chicago man speaks of the population of his town, or one from Los Angeles, of his climate. And yet such a stock as that wonderful one that was told to my youthful imagination, is more than duplicated in Macy's--and is but one of one hundred and seventeen others. And the responsibility of buying these millions of articles is scarcely less great than that of selling them. IV. Displaying and Selling the Goods With Macy's goods once purchased, the next problem becomes that of their transport to the store in Herald Square. Obviously their reception must rank second only to their purchase. And when this is accomplished, as we have just seen, in every corner of a far-flung world--Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and Thibet and Korea and South Africa, to say nothing of a thousand other places--their orderly receiving becomes, of itself, a mechanism of considerable size. Almost equally obvious it is, too, that the store, no matter how carefully and fore-visionedly and scientifically its buyers may plan, cannot always dispose of its merchandise at precisely the same rate at which it comes underneath its roof. It cannot afford to gain a reputation for not carrying in stock the items either that it advertises for sale or that it has educated its patrons to expect upon its counters. Which means that alongside of and intertwined with the orderly business of merchandise reception there must be warehousing--reservoir facilities, if you please.