Cirrus@Austlit

A Scottish sister and brother arrive at their cousins' - a Victorian squatter's station - plotting to marry their rich uncle and his niece respectively. Their plans go astray when they find the niece is already in love with Kenneth Carr, expelled from Edinburgh University for a crime which the cousin actually committed. Attempted murder follows before all is resolved in this thin and unevenly paced tale. (PB)

On those days of unhappiness attributable to nothing in particular. (Slight study). (PB)

Slight Romance. A carriage accident near a village in Victoria introduces Montague to the woman he had loved and lost 20 years before. Her death leaves her daughter to his care and they fall in love, their marriage rewarding him for his earlier loss. (PB)

US anecdote of a resident of Carson who wanted to join the circus and his brave exchange with the circus owner. Humour. (PB)

A rich young man's act of kindness to a poor girl and her starving drunken father is repaid ten years later when he is unemployed and they successful. Slight. Probably US; urban. (PB)

Christmas tale from the US of a supper for the inhabitants of an apartment building in the Widow Winterpippin's rooms, and the sharing of wealth and love she encourages between them. Light fantasy and romance. (PB)

A Max Adeler anecdote about a wife who forgot to put a hot brick in her bed and the night in jail her husband receives for throwing it out the window. Slight. (PB)

A bachelor flirt receives a lesson when he is infatuated with a beautiful woman of a house Christmas party - only to discover too late that she was already married. (PB)

Romance of the 1870s. Lovers are separated when a note accompanying flowers is hidden by a jealous rival; but a meeting during a holiday in Switzerland restores their understanding. (PB)

Set in Concord, New Hampshire in the 1850s, a clergyman's indebtedness to his butcher is inadvertantly revealed in the middle of church by his servant. (PB)

A sailor's widow is consoled by the unexpected return of her husband at Christmas. Brief. (PB)

US romance. A Christmas snowstorm brings the last descendant of a Hudson River family to the doorstep of the diminished Dalton mansion. The romance is completed on his return the following Christmas when he rescues Audry Dalton from an escaped prisoner. Uneven; slight. (PB)

An orphan who does good in his adopted village is guided by fairies to a mountain of wealth guarded by an ogre. His courage and self-discipline overcome the threats and he wins the gold and a beautiful maiden. Good but patchy. (PB)

Plain tale of a young servant who gets thinner despite her generous meals until it is discovered she is starving herself to feed her brother and grandmother. Wholesome homespun. (PB)

Christmas in Melbourne in 1864 sees a box left on the doorstep of a barrister ruining his life through alcohol, which he had begun to drink on the Bendigo diggings. The box contains a baby girl for whom he eventually reforms his life so that by Christmas 1879 he has a cosy house and a sound practice. Broadly moral tale with some interesting material re diggings, drink etc. Mostly interior reflections. (PB)

Anecdote of William of Prussia's revenge on Napoleon's nephew for his mother's ill-treatment. (PB)

A New England famer's wife tests her talent as an artist - but her husband fails to recognise her subject. Humour (PB)