Almost forgotten by all but the children who love to gather 
garlands of their fragrant buds and flowers from old roadsides and 
deserted gardens, the Old-Fashioned Roses tease the conscience of 
the modern gardener with a sense of loss. Every grown man and 
woman cherishes some memory of the fragrant, unsophisticated 
charm of the Roses of long ago. Even the most unsentimental 
gardener has an uneasy feeling that something precious may have 
disappeared with the old-time Roses, for surely flowers so beloved 
a century ago must be worthy of affection and regard, as much as 
the songs they inspired and the memories they have left. 
More and more, that feeling of loss has crept into the conscious¬ 
ness of all who love Roses. Not all the welter of gorgeous color and 
the superabundance of bloom produced by modern Roses can over¬ 
come an indefinable regret for the disappearance of those happy old 
Roses which stood so brave and sturdy in dooryard and farmstead, 
and reigned unchallenged queens in quaint old formal gardens. 
The movement to bring them back advanced slowly and pain¬ 
fully, because the old Roses seemed irretrievably lost. Propagated 
from hand to hand, passed on from neighbor to neighbor, their 
names forgotten or local names substituted for the originals, many 
of the most beautiful varieties perished and only a remnant re¬ 
mained, difficult to collect, impossible to identify. 
But the desire to have them back again would not be defeated. 
Friends of this firm have known for a long time of our interest in 
Old-Fashioned Roses. Patient search through old gardens and 
records enabled us to collect a few of them which we have advertised 
in our catalogue, adding from time to time such discoveries as we 
were able to make. This booklet was first impelled by the acquisition 
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