Behind the cowboy-Victorian facades and plate glass windows of what were once hardware stores or dry goods emporiums one detects the electric glow of slot machines.

I saw ample larders, dry goods emporiums stocked with the best woolens of dying New England mills, dressers lined with hair tonics and peppermint soap.

Since the pretty, Paris Hilton look-alike clerk in the nearest wireless goods emporium exuded from every pore in her body that she was not there to teach, I sat in my car with the instruction manual.

The sweet and savoury tarts and other confections are delish and, if you like the grandma's kitchen-chic décor, nip across the road to their pre-loved goods emporium.

The great 19th-century "dry goods emporiums" - O'Neill's, an early B. Altman, Siegel-Cooper - had been sitting there in quiet decrepitude for so long that they had become like natural features.

Altman's was the first big department store to make the move from the "Ladies' Mile" shopping district, where the dry goods emporia had been located, to Fifth Avenue.

Besides a supermarket (a hit with Lucian and Adrian, who loved the kid-size grocery carts), the only store we visited was a sporting goods emporium where we bought $10 aquatic wings so the boys could float.

A tour of Main Street had revealed the hardware store to be their only target; they had found no gunsmith's shop, no sporting goods emporium with rifles in the window.

Miller also ran Moss & Miller, a sporting goods emporium in Chesterfield, with Chesterfield F.C. footballer Ernie Moss, for a number of years.

The store is called a "stationery and fancy goods emporium".