Cirrus@Austlit

A Deacon despatched to buy a Christmas turkey spends his money drinking and carries home a stuffed pelican given to him as a joke to a very icy reception. Humour. (PB)

Romance of Northern England and Australia. A sailor falls in love with a rural English lass but after a humorous Christmas Eve serenading competition with the local poet he discovers that she loves another she sent away years before. The sailor tracks him down on the Australian goldfields and sends him home to her. Light entertaining romance; unusual narrative voice and mixture of genres. (PB)

Juvenile tale of a brother and sister who quarrel over the style of slipper to give grandfather for New Year - and the selfless compromise reached. Exemplary. (PB)

Humorous anecdote of the remuneration Dugal Magill extracted from his Lanarkshire kirk for his duties as an elder. (PB)

A murder in East Melbourne involves Mark Sinclair and his rival, Detective Campy, in solving it. A young man's murder in evening clothes with a bunch of cyclamens in his lapel implicates a pretty but calculating 24 year old in Richmond, a jealous young doctor, and a shamed mother who commits suicide. A prying woman next door assists Sinclair. (PB)

A poor London milliner gives her aunt's gift of a crown to a starving woman she finds on the doorstep of her lodgings. She tells her first lie and loses her position through the gift, and her mother and sisters become even more poor as she is forced to common sewing. Her lover becomes rich, moves away and marries another, and she herself dies - but on her deathbed the first installment of and from the starving woman is received. They migrate to American and prosper eventually. (PB)

English sketch of a shoemaker who orders a coat like a nobleman's - and the "nobleman's" revenge. Humour and moral. (PB)

Romance of the Irish gentry. Fendell Court has fallen into disrepair through the mysterious disappearance of the owner 30 years before and the inability of his heir to inherit without proof of death. A New Year's Eve diversion in opening an old box and dressing in the costume within draws the secret of the previous Lord's death from an old serving maid. Light. (PB)

An old man and woman buy toys each Christmas Eve for their long dead children. Pathos. (PB)

A Scottish guest eats an entire chicken meant for the whole family's Christmas dinner. (PB)