Happy? Yes! Coming from the Peony fields. 
FOREWORD •"pi-IIS TREATISE on the Peomj is issued to create a more 
BY JOHN M GOOD I widely spread interest in tliis grand liardy perennial, by 
telling ol its history, its culture and ol its superlatively 
great beauty. To the average person—that is, to ninety-nine out ol every one hundr ed 
llower lovers—the word Peony is lixed in their memories simply as a Red Peony or a 
White Peony or a Pink Peony, while the actual lact is that the Peomj with very small 
outlay and attention on your part will reveal itsell to you in such splendor that King 
Solomon nor the Queen ol Sheba in all their grandeur could vie with the modern Peony 
in their magnificence. Indeed a plantation ol choice Peonies is a veritable paradise ol 
loveliness and fragrance. 
Should this little booklet in a measure correct this false opinion that Peonies are a 
subject that may be dismissed by a passing thought, it will then have accomplished its 
mission and thus aid in the wider dissemination ol this much neglected plant. 
The ab ove was written lor the first edition ol “Peonies lor Pleasure” just a lew years 
ago. The results have fully justified our conclusions at that time, lor as evidence ol the 
“more widely spread interest” our sales at first doubled, then trebled, and last fall more 
than quadrupled. When we started in the peony business our annual sales amounted to 
twelve hundred roots simply to color-Red, White and Pink; while now we have sold in 
one season as many as fiftij thousand Festiva Maxima, twenty thousand Felix Crousse, 
twenty-five thousand Edul is Superba, ten thousand Monsieur Jules Elie, etc., etc. Surely 
this is evidence ol increased interest. 
In commenting on the statement, “I believe everyone is Peony mad,” Mr. A. P 
Saunders, Secretary ol the American Peony Society, in Bulletin ol Peony News No. 2, says: 
“It will be good news to the nurseryman that people are going Peony mad. It is high 
time they did, too; we are, of course, all Peony mad; at least all the world thinks us so, 
because we have known something ol the charm and beauty ol the llower, while others 
have been blind to them. What a day would dawn for the growers il we should drift 
into a Peomj mania like the tulip mania that struck the Dutch in the seventeenth century. 
How would some of our friends leel, I wonder, il some line morning they should be offered 
lor a precious root ol Le Cygne the inventory ol goods once swapped in Holland lor a single 
The Good & Reese Company, Springfield, Ohio 
Page One 
