authority. Free are we to indulge in any wild and irregular sort of rose-growing our tastes or our hobbies get us into. And, by the same token, there is no canon for viewing another person's garden. We are free to think whatever we like about it. Our visitors have nothing like a code, either. They admire, or they do not; and admiring, carry off all the blooms they want. No one says, "You must admire my Souvenir d'un Ami or get out of my garden!" It seems strangely probable that these roses of our old-time gardens, these precious relics of our great and greater grandmothers, compel admiration for themselves--everybody lingers and seems to love them.
     Our visitors have come from near and far. Some have journeyed here to visit roses dear to them from past associations, some to find again roses they were familiar with as children; some to see, if possible, roses they have always wanted to see for one reason or another and have not found. One never guesses how much sentiment lies behind such a visit. Such observations as our visitors make are our reward when we let them loose in our gardens, and they become the inspiration of our winter thinking about visitors.
     Up the farm road, on a fine spring morning, comes striding a sturdy farmer, a strong man of the soil who can walk miles behind a plow and wear out two teams in a day. When he tells us his name we remember that we have heard his voice from across the cove, calling to his cows and shouting at his horses. He is a neighbor.
     "I've seen you people working out here. I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to come and find out what you were doing.
     "We tell him. We invite him to come down and have a look.
     With a hearty good-by he strides away. Ile has satisfied himself. We have enjoyed an exhibition of natural curiosity. No doubt he thinks we are great fools to work and fertilize and take away good land for old roses which might be better planted to cigarette tobacco. He has never come back. Probably, he never will. But one can believe that he now prunes and fertilizes his old rose bushes with greater interest.
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     Up the road on a heavenly Sunday morning comes an unexpected carload of old friends from the North. They pile out. We welcome them, and all of us trail into the garden. Among them is an officer of a great industrial organization, a fine, city-finished, slightly gray man. We have known him for years. While the rest rove like so many pigeons here and there among the roses, he sits on a bench alone, a detached soul, looking, looking, to the right, to the left, below him, absolutely quiet. A young man sits down by him, a boy almost ready to try for his place in a world of men. The quiet man begins to talk. He speaks almost fiercely.
     "Don't let yourself into anything you do not want. Don't, above all things, get yourself into any routine out of which you can never hope to be released. Don't, I pray you, become a business slave! I'm a business slave! I've never done what I wanted to do! I always wanted to grow things!"
     Imagine the surprise this boy felt at this outbreak of a big businessman! This man never asked a question about a rose. He did not touch a flower. He just sat and looked, and wanted to grow things. He will come back one day, when he is ready to start.
     On another glorious spring-to-summer Sunday, in the afternoon, come some friends from up the river. They have come often to see the roses, and choose their time this day because they know the blooms will be at their finest. Among them is a lawyer who works among the roses about his home, although he does not know names or varieties. Many of his roses are inherited plants, for his estate is old and honored. He takes much time and moves ahead slowly while his wife and children range from flower to flower. He puts his fingers behind each separate bloom which attracts him and looks each sweet rose searchingly in the face, hunting the beauty which pleases him. He is making a deliberate, painstaking search for perfection. "This I like best." He has chosen from among them, the old red Gallica rose, the "damasked" rose of Shakespeare and Bacon, the red rose of the herbals of John Gerard and Parkinson, and from all we can learn, the earliest rose brought to America by the colonists. His choice is very sound, too. For beauty of outline, form, regularity of petals, gay color, fra-
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