[Illustration:  Looking up the rows of a bed of our seedlings three years after transplanting.  The white variety in the centre of the picture is Frances Willard, considered by us one of the world’s best whites.  At the time this picture was taken, the flowers were just opening, so one gets no idea of the size of the blooms after they open.]

Either eighteen or nineteen years ago my father definitely set about the bringing forth of a line of new peonies.  For years he had been experimenting with seedling apples.  His immense collection of peonies gave him the idea of producing something better along that line.  A great bed was planted out from which to collect seed.  Hundreds of the best varieties obtainable were planted in this bed, two of each variety, with a very liberal use of the three varieties, Edulis Superba, Fragrans and Triumph de l’Ex. de Lille.  Some twelve varieties of the most vigorous singles of all colors were also used.  Bees and the elements were allowed to do the cross-fertilizing.  In the fall of 1899 the first seed, amounting in all to about a peck, was harvested and planted.  This seed was allowed to dry and was planted just before it froze up, directly into the field where the plants were to remain and bloom.

The seed was planted about two inches deep, in rows two feet apart, with the seeds six inches apart in the row.  Immediately after the ground froze a two-inch mulch of coarse slough hay was spread all over the field.  This was removed in the spring and the field kept perfectly clean that season by hand weeding, as cultivation could not be practiced.  No seed germinated that year.  That fall the ground was again mulched, and this mulch removed early the next, or second, spring.

This second season just as soon as nature began to quicken the little peonies began to pierce the soil.  Standing at one end of the field and looking down the rows one could fairly see the little fellows burst forth from their long confinement and thrust their little red heads in serried ranks through the brown earth.  They reminded one of line upon line of miniature red-coated soldiers on parade.

A fourteen-tooth Planet Jr. horse cultivator was immediately started amongst them, and intense cultivation given the bed that season.  By the end of the growing season the little plants were from two to four inches high.

The next spring, the third from the planting of the seed, the young plants burst through the ground strong and robust.  Cultivation was started immediately, as during the season before, and the plants made rapid growth.  By the middle of May, most of them were eight inches high with an abundance of foliage.

We noticed a few buds appear this season.  The strong, vigorous development of the buds, of one plant in particular, continued to claim our attention, and we watched it with intense interest.  Day by day the buds grew larger, and then finally a day came when the first petal lifted, and the next morning the petals spread forth in all their glory.  It was a gem, we realized we had something first class.  My father said after he had studied it a while, “It pays me for all my time, and money, and work.  If I never get another as good I shall be satisfied.”  It was a beautiful dark red, very early, as good a red as Terry’s Rachel.  We named it Richard Carvel.