horoughly informed respecting it, and exercises over it a general
supervision, to which its increasing success is due. He knows exactly
what is in the house, how much is on hand, and how it is selling. He
fixes the prices himself, and keeps them always at a popular figure. He
is said to have an aversion to keeping goods over from one season to
another, and would rather sacrifice them than do so. He has no dead
stock on hand. His knowledge of the popular taste and its variations is
intuitive, and his great experience enables him to anticipate its
changes.

"There can not be so much selling without proportionate buying, and
Stewart is as systematic in the latter as the former. Of late he has not
acted personally in making purchases, but has trusted to the system
which he organized some years ago, and which he has found to admirably
answer as his substitute. He has branch establishments exercising
purchasing functions only in Boston and Philadelphia, in the United
States; in Manchester, England; and in Paris and Lyons, France. But
while these are his agencies, his buyers haunt the marts of the whole
world. There is no center of commerce or manufacture of the wide range
of articles in which he deals, on either of the continents, where he is
not always present by deputy to seize upon favorable fluctuations of the
market, or pounce upon some exceptionally excellent productions. He
owns entire the manufactory of the celebrated Alexandre kid-glove. He
has a body of men in Persia, organized under the inevitable
superintendent, chasing down the Astrachan goat heavy with young, from
which the unborn kids are taken and stripped of their skins, thus
sacrificing two animals for every skin obtained. He rifles Lyons of its
choicest silks, the famous productions of Bonnet and Ponson. Holland and
Ireland yield him the first fruits of their looms. Belgium contributes
the rarest of her laces, and the North sends down the finest of its
Russian sables. All the looms of France, England, Belgium, and the
United States are closely watched, and the finest fabrics in dress
goods, muslins, carpets, and calicoes are caught up the moment the
workmen put on the finishing touches. He buys for cash the world over,
and is a customer every-where so recognized as desirable that he has his
choice of industrial productions, and on more advantageous terms than
his rivals can purchase what he leaves. He has been so long in the
business, and has become so thor