the coming of both Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street. There is no doubt of that. He had a habit of reiterating his prophecy to all with whom he came in contact.

The prophecy came to pass. Union Square no longer was surrounded by fine residences. Trade had invaded it, successfully. Tiffany's, Brentano's, The Century's fine publishing house had come to replace the homes of the old time New Yorkers. So, too, had Fourteenth Street been transformed. Delmonico's was still at one of its Fifth Avenue corners and back of it stood, and still stands, the Van Buren residence, a sort of Last of the Mohicans in brick and stone and timber and plaster. All the rest was business; high-grade business, if you please, and Macy's stood in the very heart of it.

We saw, in a preceding chapter, how just before the passing of Mr. Macy he had taken into partnership Mr. LaForge and Mr. Valentine. Mr. LaForge, as we have just seen, lived hardly a year after Mr. Macy's death in Paris, and Mr. Valentine died less than a twelvemonth later—on February 15, 1879. Yet the force and impress of both of these men remained with the organization for a long time after their going. Miss Prunty, one of the older members of it, still remembers as one of her earliest recollections, seeing Mr. LaForge taking groups of the cash-girls out to supper during the racking holiday season. The little girls were duly grateful. Theirs was a drab existence, at the best; long hours and wearying ones. A type that has quite passed out of existence—in these days of automatic carriers—that old-time cash girl in the big store, with her red-checked gingham frock and her hair in pig-tails, which had a fashion of sticking straight out from her small head. Lunch in a small tin pail and a vast ambition, which led many and many a one of them into positions of real trust and responsibility.

The most of them continued in the business of merchandising. They rose rapidly to be saleswomen, buyers and department managers—not alone in Macy's; but in the other great stores of the city. A Macy training became recognized as a business schooling of the greatest value. While at least one of these Macy graduates—Carrie DeMar—came to be an actress of nation-wide reputation, a comedienne of real merit.

There were times when the existence of these smart, pert little girls grew less drab. One of them told me not so long ago of the entente cordiale which she had upbuilded between Mr. S—— and herself; nearly fifty years ago.

"Mr. S—— was the only floorwalker that the store possessed in those days," said she. "Mr. Macy had been much impressed by his fine appearance and had created the post for him. On duty, he seemed a most solemn man. That was a part of his work. Behind it all he was most human, however; and sometimes on a hot day in midsummer he would begin to think of the cooling lager that flowed at The Grapevine, a few blocks down the avenue. That settled it. He would have to slip down there for five minutes. And slip down he did, while I stood guard at the Thirteenth Street door. I felt that Miss Getchell's far-seeing eye was forever upon us or that Mr. Macy might turn up quite unexpectedly.

"In return for all this, Mr. S—— would occasionally stand guard while I would slip over to John Huyler's bakery at Eighth Avenue and Fourteenth Street—sometimes to get one of his wonderful pies, and other times to buy the lovely new candies upon which he was beginning to experiment. We were great pals—S—— and I."

Nowadays in the great department stores they order this entire business of collecting both cash and packages in a far better fashion. The merchant of today has a variety of wondrous mechanical contraptions—not only cash-carriers but cash-registers—which do the work they once did, much more rapidly and efficiently. Even in those long ago days of the 'eighties the Macy store was beginning to install pneumatic tubes for carrying the money from the saleswomen at the counters to the high-set booths of the head cashiers, who seemingly had come to regard it as a mere commodity, to be regarded in as fully impersonal a fashion as boots or shoes or sugar or broom-sticks. Put that down as progress for the 'eighties.