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pleasant and buoyant in spirit, and cheery in temper, that we cannot at this hoHday 

 season cry ' enough.' " — Daily News. 



"The chief charm about the volume is that it contains a large number of shortish 

 chapters, each of which is so thoroughly enjoyable to those who like descriptive, true, 

 and at the same time bright and often racy reading. We give it a cordial welcome." — 

 Rural World. 



"It is impossible to deny the attractiveness of his record. Nature has no truer lover 

 than Mr. Emerson, and it is really remarkable how the chronicling of the progress of 

 the year in growing and perishing vegetation, and in the coming and going of birds, leaves 

 in his hands a story that carries one on from week to week without any flagging of interest. 

 In ordinary hands, as to ordinary eyes, the nine months (October to March) would be very 

 dull indeed. . . . We heartily commend the book to the naturalist." — Literary World. 



"Another of those pleasant descriptive volumes by which Mr. P. H. Emerson has 

 made his name. . . . He is a naturalist of the most valuable kind. His book is also 

 diversified, as before, with realistic pictures of rural humours and drama. Reproductions 

 of his clever photographs are dotted about the te.xt." — Star. 



"Those who know Mr. Emerson's writings know they can reckon on originality and 

 vivid portraiture. He has remarkably keen powers of observation . . . indeed, he is a 

 poet on his own lines. . . . Above all, the book is full of the study of human nature. 

 Whatever be the list of dramatis persona, he manages to work them into a little water- 

 idyll in harmony with the surroimdings of marsh or stream, meadow or forest. There 

 are nearly a score of charming little vignette views." — Scotsman. 



" His books have always a masterful effect upon one, and his latest is in many respects 

 his best ; it is marked by the same faithful presentment of dialect and genial personality. 

 Mr. Emerson has frequently dembnstrated the value of photography in book illustration 

 before." — Glasgow Ez'c?ii?ig Neivs. 



"Mr. Emerson's last and most delightful book reminds us now and then — and we 

 know of no higher praise — of poor Maupassant. Mr. Emerson has chosen to illuminate 

 a unique phase of English rural and water-side life. He is the poet-painter of the Norfolk 

 and Suffolk Broads, and the pictures he has drawn of them in 'English Idylls' and 'A 

 .Son of the Fens' belomj to literature. With the Frencli side to him he is also of the race 

 of Thoreau. . . . Mr. Emerson paints in the spacious large, and not in the niggling little. 

 . . . The human interest comes in like the recurring strain in a fugue. Here again a 

 line, a single speech, very delicately and truly reproduced as to dialect, a couple of adjec- 

 tives, are all that Mr. P2merson employs to touch off a figure. They are dots in the 

 landscape, much like the figures that Turner throws into his pictures, but more lifelike, 

 more significant. . . . They represent a whole piece of literary illusion. ... Its chief 

 charm is undeniably its good but usually restrained pictorial ipower."— Speaker. 



" Much has been written about the broads and rivers of Norfolk and Suftblk, but never 

 with such success as in the wonderful word-pictures of Mr. Emerson. ... He hac a style 

 of his own, full of power and originality. . . . His success lies in the fact that he can 

 most admirably interpret his own extraordinary power of recognising all there is in a scene. 

 . . . And although it breathes the very essence of healthy vigour and enjoyment of life, 

 it clearly shows an intense love of Nature in her saddest and sternest moods. The author 

 has described bird life on the lagoons with a thoroughness which nothing but pure love 

 and long study of the subject could have produced. . . . The angler will find many bits 

 about fish and fishing in these pages." — Fishing Gazette. 



" .Authors of the cast of Gilbert White, Thoreau, and the writer of this goodly volume 

 are rare and precious. . . . To be at home with the ' means and common thinys of the 

 eternal yesterday ' is a gift which the gods bestow upon few. . . . Man seems to have lost 

 the delightful sense of wonder that, for example, pervades the Odyssey. To turn the 

 open into art is the difficult task Mr. Emerson has set himself. Has he succeeded? On 

 the whole, yes. . . . To the casual reader Mr. Emerson's purpose will not be apparent 

 . . . yet the book as a picture of English lagoon life is a wonderful feat of realism. . . . 

 The plates too are of surpassing excellence, and we doubt if any one has ever, in a greater 

 degree, carried the true feeling for art into the practice of photography. . . . One com- 

 mendable feature of Mr. Emerson's book, apart f:om its artistic, realistic, and literary 

 merits, is its outspokenness and hearty condemnation of cant and humbug of all kinds. 

 . . . Mr. Emerson's book is instinct with cheery audacity and keen observation of men 

 and things. We rise from its perusal invigorated." — Daily Chronicle. 



" A winter cruise on the Broads does not seem tempting, yet in the words of an artist 

 in words like Mr. Emerson its narrative acquires a charm which is somewhat difficult to 

 define. ... It must have been inordinately dull, and yet the reader follows each day's 

 work and pleasure with attention, and looks back upon it with pleasure. . . . Every 

 chronicle of the year's alterations has its fascinations when you get the proper person to 



