Cirrus@Austlit

A commercial traveller in Europe is very hospitably asked to the home of a travelling acquaintance - later discovering it is to settle a domestic criticism of the man's ugliness. Slight. (PB)

Tale of the narrator's bohemian youth as a hack artist in London in 1872, his near loss of his worldly possessions through gambling, and a decision to give it up after his horse fails to win the Derby. Emigration to New Zealand and hard work brings him success and the faithful Lucy as his wife. Interesting side comments on status, class and the artist in England and New Zealand. (PB)

Tale of a house in Connecticut prepared to receive a bride and kept in that state for twenty years, since the bride died of a heart attack on her wedding day and the groom returned to Europe. Plot involves the loss of the bride's first love in the US Civil War and a vow that she should die on the same day she married anyone else. (PB)

Two brothers, corn-merchants in Liverpool, engage women to fill four vacant office positions, ostensibly to assist in the emancipation of women, really to save money through lower wages. After five months of constant visiting by the clerks of other firms, three of the women resign to marry and the fourth marries one of the merchants. Humour; very against employing women in business. (PB)

A newspaper editor's quick response to a reader complaining about an electric battery invention to prevent horses from baulking - which nearly had him killed. (PB)

Tale of Carl Schmidt, of German extraction living in Melbourne, whose holiday to Ballarat is disturbed by nightly visitations from a beautiful ghost. Once he solves her murder and speaks to her repentant dying husband she rests, and he continues on his holiday to Mount Rousse. (PB)

An artist draws a portrait of the sixteen year-old woman who he imagines from the child he glimpsed when starting on his career. He meets her but she is engaged to another - until she loses her position. (PB)

A child soldier dies in the arms of Mary Fisher, a matronly volunteer nurse, at Gettysburg in 1863. Very moving sketch of his need for his mother. (PB)

Mark Sinclair follows the daughter of an old friend who has run away with an embezzler from Melbourne and his nephew who loved her too - they go by ship to Fremantle. Then follows the girl's arrest; confrontations with Aboriginals including a white man disguised as a black; an ancient Aboriginal queen spearing a man; and a girl's ruined name ... (PB)

Edwin Thorne rescues two young ladies marooned on an island near a coastal resort when their boat comes adrift. As friendship follows, he begins to fall in love with Maude Fielding but she dismisses him. Next Christmas they meet in an amateur theatrical and the separation is resolved. Smoothly written; some suggestions of female friendships impending romance. (PB)

The narrator, on the California gold diggings in 1854 and Ballarat and Avoca in 1858, helps solve a girl's disappearance with the tracking ability of his dog, Pip. Her sweetheart had attacked her and later pretended to help search for her among the abandoned shafts of the Swan diggings. Retribution from the mining community is swift. Tight, simple tale. (PB)

A jealous husband returns from a business trip early and thinks he hears his wife leaving for a party with another man. He decides to kill himself and is only saved by accident - to discover that it was his wife's cousin ... Both learn a lesson. Light, slightly questionable moral. (PB)

A beautiful Melbourne woman loses the man she loves to her beautiful but non-flirtatious cousin, and when they marry she partially loses her reason, eventually drowning herself in the Yarra. Slighter achievement than the first two stories in the series.(PB)