Morning journal and courier., 1883-01-04
MT Bancroft's Roses.
Attractions of His Garden in Washing
 ton.

ton.
 Correspondence of the Chicago Tribune.J
 MT. Bancrofts hobby is rose-culture. Fancy this of a man who spends his days in setting up the day bones of facts, and breath ing into them the life of history His winter home is double brown stone, and had orig inaly small strip of ground on each side of the entrance There was one blaze of color from February to June. Such hyacinths surely never bloomed outside of poem and the tulips looked as if some tropical bird had been plucked near by, and its plumage seat tered broadcast over the beds. Every shade and color in nature spaint box was represent ed and under the woo1ng sun and soft air of midwinter they thrust up from the mold long before the leaves were out or the spring prince had kissed the sleeping world to life; and in the SHOWS and storms that always fol- low such 8 weather-tru they would stand erect and glowing and hold their ground un- til the green was washed into the hills, and the cat tails began to frisk on the trees.
 But all of this was only prelude to his rose garden. He bought large lot which joined his property at right angles, facing on Seventeenth street; of couIse, he paid fancy price for it, as it was in the heart of the West End. Straightway he planted it all in roses.
 Such fowersl
 They ranged in color from the paIest bloom of Provence to the passionate heart of the Jacqueminot; Marechal Mel bendsin stately courtesy to Marie Gillot and sighs in perfume for the Cloth-of- Gold and the memories of the Malmaison !; Madam Melsh shakes her petals at the White Coquet, the Alter rose, the pale Safrona, and the Damask Blush; the Micraflla lifts up it's white cups to the sun, and Maria Cook faints in the glow of sister hood whose very names have forgotten. The garden is like temple where thousand spices are burning in flames of as many <,o1n o1Nd hn 6fcfrv So N1,o worshiper.
 He is an early riser, and many 8 morning have been awakened by cries and comments, incoherent as to words, but ringing with pleasure! I would go to my window, and there. bending over rose after rose, would be the slight, elastic figure of their adorer-his white beard and hair sweeping the freshness from their chalices and getting the first per- fumes of the young day. He carried book in one hand and ia three legged stool" in the other, and spent two or three hours just wan dering from bush to bush in an ecstacy of content-sometimeski kissing the flowers, some times caressing them with his fingers, and frequently dropping on his stool under some specially odorous cluster to read his book to the accompaniment-soun sense and sweet scents
 His house at Newport is surrounded by sea of bloom and fragrance, and he makes his roses the calendar by which he tells of his seasons. He stays in Washington until June and the Jacqueminots die together then he flies to his northern garden, where he fingers until the hardest of it's denizens are dead and the ghosts of their petals fall in snow from the clouds of November His house in Washington is stored with interest ing things, the speciality being that there is one of everything and that one of the very best His hospitality is lavish and elegant and his library what Ruskin would call "A tomb of the kings" In build the historian is, as I have said, slight, his hair and beard are like cream -colored silk, his dark eyes tender with the fires of 30, and his move ments quick and graceful. He rides every day on a fiery black horse, and can tire out his young companions in hard trot every time.