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Account of the performance of a play to help found the London 'Guild of Literature and Art', involving particulalrly The Duke of Devonshire; Sir Joseph Paxton; Charles Dickens; Mark Lemon; Augustus Egg, R. A.; Robert Bell; Douglas Jerrold and Queen Victoria. (PB)
Victoria, a beautiful talented woman, sacrifices her own desires to care for her orphaned step-sister and brother and her older brother's bush property. She saves money for the errant younger brother she still hopes to save - and they are briefly reunited before her death. A familiar theme well-told and with fresh interesting side-comments, as for instance on English types, religion and character. (PB)
During a period boring for oil in Pennsylvania in the 1860s, the narrator decides to use a train track to ride along during a snow storm. He and his horse escape death by inches. (PB)
A man on business in Prague, impatient to return to his beloved wife, loses his pocketbook with nearly $1400 in it. It is restored to him by a man he takes to be Satan, and shortly after another meeting - on Walpurgis Night - he is unfaithful to his wife, a murderer, an arsonist, a highway robber and a fratricide. This resolves itself into a dream ... but the force of the tale is in cultivating faith and strength of character. (PB)
Scarlet fever strikes a small town near Otago New Zealand, killing many children. A mother stricken down with inflammation of the lungs worries for her children and others. Pious. (PB)
Reminiscence of two meetings with Gavell where he emerged victorious - against Indians at Lucknow, and one against a gold miner at Tuapeka, New Zealand. (PB)
Of an everyday fairy princess who scorns the everyday faithful prince and marries the dashing ogre who brings her to misery. Told by a portly cigarsmoking fairy 'godmother'. (PB)