[Illustration: A Poppylar Writer in Poppy Land.]
"'Over the Hills and far away!' follow yours faithfully CLEMENT
SCOTT." This is the full title, and signed advice to the public given
on the frontispiece of his little shilling book published by EGLINTON.
It is dedicated to Sir EDWARD LAWSON--"right thing to do my boy!"--and
appropriately so, as if the Baron's memory runneth not to the
contrary, most if not all the articles in this author's little
holiday-book have appeared at some time or other in the _D.T._, and
do not suffer any D.T.rioration by being bound up together in this
shilling volume. It tells of a visit to Hayling, where he picked up
health, strength, and an aspirate, when he went there ailing; he tells
of Suffolk, where a branch of the Great Punchian Family is settled,
known as The Suffolk Punches; he prattles of _Honeymoon Land_, where
he met the man with seven wives, each of whom had a cat, and to each
cat there was a kit, and to each wife a kit too, it is to be hoped,
in the shape otherwise of a _trousseau_, and of many other pleasant
restful places and refreshing jaunts he tells delightfully. "But of
all the pleasant places in which his lines have fallen, commend me,"
quoth the Baron,--"and the lines he has written will send many to
these pleasant places--(But O the Trippers!)--of all these give me the
_Flower Farm at Holy Vale_ and the _Valley of Ferns_." If the reader
cannot go to all the sweet resorts herein mentioned, let him be
induced by the first article to visit _Holy Vale_, and he will find
CLEMENT SCOTT an admirable guide for "the Scilly Season." Of course
our NOT-YET-DUN-SCOTUS hath visited the Cyril-Flower-Farm on the
Norfolk Coast. Advice: Stand not on the money-order of your going, but
go at once, and stop there. As to money, remember your Uncle dwells in
Poppy Land, quoth their true friend,