Cirrus@Austlit

English tale of clever thieves and a naive doctor and his wife. An economically straitened medical man and his wife offer board to an epileptic patient - only to discover after several months that they were providing a base for his jewel thefts. (PB)

An engagement is broken when the man's fiancée sees how he treates his mother. Marital expectations/man/woman relations. Slight. (PB)

Pleasant and amusing tale set in Victoria of Amanda St. Regent who abandons her social position to set up shop as a milliner with her uncle's help. Her step-mother's extravagance brings ruin on the family when their father loses his position at the treasury - but Amanda's business succeeds. She marries an English lord and gives up her business - but they intend to live democratically in Australia ... (PB)

An excessive telegram to her absent husband is effectively shortened by the operator. (PB)

Tale of brothers whose love is so great they can not be separated even on the younger's fever deathbed. Sister is harsh-tongued and indifferent, the physical bond as well as emotional is stressed between the brothers. Odd tension between surface of tale and its tone. Interesting. (PB)

Recollections of negro bravery during a flood on the Alabama River in 1886. (PB)

Family tale of a poor widowed mother's self-sacrifice that her daughters might have their music and art lessons and go to parties. When she collapses from overwork her daughters realise their fault, and rescue comes through her thoughtful youngest child, Bess. Moral tale, 'not a love story'. (PB)

Domestic. A wife's china painting convinces her husband he has the delirium tremens and he takes the pledge. Humour.

Less a tale than a catalogue of the Seven Wonders. In the form of a conversation between a boy and his grandfather. (PB)

Romance and society. Young fresh girl wins heart of increasingly reclusive bachelor who returns to ballrooms to win her. Pleasant. (PB)

Romance of fallen fortunes, factory work, and a jealous sister's machinations undone. Ruth Marvin works in a factory to support her paralysed father, refusing the help of her sister's husband whom her father had never trusted. She is discovered there by her former suitor who had allowed their engagement to be broken through her sister's falsehood. Slight. (PB)

Battle scene. A company charges and takes a gun position. (PB)

English tale of a mental specialist's first patient in 1870. A Berkshire man calls in the narrator to give an opinion on his wife's peculiar terror. It is several days before the doctor realises it is the husband himself who has a homicidal mania, determining to kill their infant son and drink his blood. Slight. (PB)

A poor clergyman's 17-year-old daughter re-encounters a rich and handsome visitor to the neighbourhood when she saves a train from a washed-out bridge. Slight. (PB)

A boarding-house acquaintance, a beautiful mother of twins who refuses to speak of her history, attracts the narrator's attention. She lives on the charity of the owner of the house - and one night she simply disappears. Narrator compares her to a cat 'stolen and killed for her beautiful fur'. ( A little peculiar.) (PB)

Melodrama of the return of two brothers in disguise, one as a veiled lady, one as a lawyer, to win their father's house. One, his favourite, seems innocent of the crime for which brother is being hunted - but the father's rejection of the apparently guilty son rebounds on his head. A gracious sister and greedy policeman feature. (PB)

Account of a near-lynching for horse-stealing during a walking trip in Texas. A horse-swap nearly costs the traveller's life - only his boots save him. Hanging sensations described. (PB)