What Greater Delight?
By MRS. FREDERICK L. KEAYS, Great Neck, L. I., N. Y.

     EDITORS' NOTE.-Elsewhere in this Annual there is printed a review of Mrs. Keays' delightful book, "Old Roses," which is the real authority upon these flowers of yesteryear. That work gives a reason for her quest, and ought to encourage a form of what might be called reverse novelty seeking. In the essay that follows, this Lady of the Old Rose takes us with her to gardens that have age, history, dignity. To the Editor she recalls his mother's roses of the garden and his father's pets of the nursery and greenhouse that were back of that home-garden. Memories rise, scents and colors are recalled, even locations remembered, of those days when there was no dream of Breeze Hill, no suspicion of an American Rose Society. There is one existent precious link-a copy of Ellwanger's "The Rose," in its first edition of 1882, and dated on the fly-leaf May 31, 1887, in which are certain pencil memoranda made by the Editor's rose-loving father, giving his experiences.

HAT greater delight," asks our old garden friend John Gerard of Queen Elizabeth's day, in "The Herball or General Historie of Plants" (1597),--"What greater delight is there than to behold the earth apparelled with plants as with. a robe of imbroidered worke set with orient pearles and garnished with great diversitie of rare and costly jewels?" And what greater delight have we in our own day than to visit fine gardens, large or small, modern or old, and behold our own land wearing its "robe of imbroidered worke"! Such pleasures are ours for the taking.
     For a fee devoted to charity or other good purpose, we may visit many a notable modern garden, "apparelled with beautiful plants," to which we are attracted by a landscaping problem or the form and content of the flower garden itself, or by some feature lavishly carried out, like sweeps of dancing daffodils in naturalized plantings among white birch trees, a famous collection of oriental flowering cherries and plums, more than a hun-dred varieties of lilacs, a rose-garden planted in color gradations,. and an intensively planted rock-garden.
     In one handsome garden, comprising a group of specialized gardens, "garnished with great diversitie," at times open for a charity benefit, everything lovely in the way of planting grows at its best. We have visited in this garden to see the display of tulips, the rainbows of iris, the rock-gardens, the herbaceous borders; lately to see the roses again. The pleasure we have here

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