Mr. Selfridge, the Wisconsin-born retailer who left school at 14, rose to become a partner in Marshall Field's, Chicago.     1     in 1852, it was one of the first and most ambitious US department stores. Mr. Selfridge had done well with Marshall Field's. He liked to say, 'the customer is always right, ' which made the Chicago store popular. And he is believed to have     2     the phrase 'Only Shopping Days until Christmas'.

When he visited London on holiday in 1906, he was surprised to find most of the city's department stores were no     3     for their American and Parisian competitors. This led Selfridge to leave the US and establish Selfridges - a department store named after him at the west end of London's Oxford Street. In Oxford Street, Selfridge's design team     4     an ambitious classical palace building with a wall of plate glass windows.

Opened in 1909, Selfridges     5     customers a hundred departments along with restaurants, a roof garden, reading and writing rooms, reception areas for foreign visitors, a first     6     room and most importantly, a small army of knowledgeable floor-walking assistants who served as guides as well as being    7     instructed in the art of making a sale.

Mr. Selfridge did much to make the department store a destination rather than just a big and     8     stocked city shop. It became a place to meet and for ladies to lunch. Mr. Selfridge later introduced the department store as a key     9     of the 20th century culture, and Chaplin     10     the growing trend for shopping in the -department store in his film The Floorwalker.