Cirrus@Austlit

A hen-pecked husband determines to enter his wife in the 'irritation' contest at the Agricultural Fair - but discovers it is 'irrigation'. Humour(!) (PB)

A father recalls the nights his son fell asleep holding his hand - and now he is dead. Pathos. Small pious comfort. (PB)

A mark made on a door to measure a boy's height witnesses the death of the family's little daughter then the mother. Pathos. (PB)

A holiday-maker on the New Jersey coast hears the tale of his local boatman's romance in the 1840s. How he struggled through poverty to win his sweetheart but jealousy and a misunderstanding separated them until he was nearly killed in rescuing a ship's crew in a storm. Slight. (PB)

On the lies told by lovers 'wracked' by parting but surviving nevertheless. Satirical. (PB)

Account by an English journalist of his ghostly rescue by a wounded German officer during the Franco-German War. The phantom of his friend shoots the French guerrila who surprises the journalist at a battle outpost. 'Inexplicable' genre. (PB)

Tale of a Russian countess in Paris robbed of a pair of earrings through two separate confidence tricks of great originality - one at the Opera, one at her house. Competent. (PB)

Romance of the English stage. A leading actor and actress are continually quarrelling until he saves her from a stage fire at the cost of his appearance and his eyes. Then true woman's love emerges ... Slight; well-paced. (PB)

Domestic tale. A husband's wish that his wife and children be more like a neighbour's family evaporates when their chidren die quickly from scarlet fever due to their system of childrearing. Pathos. (PB)

A doctor's trifling kindness to a child in a London hospital comforts her last days. Brief. (PB)

Victorian country policeman/mounted trooper William Regan is so angered by the refusal of his proposal by the widow Knights that he threatens her with revenge. She is found murdered and he is suspected - along with her son-in-law he is thought to have the best motive. But a swagman's evidence and a marked banknote solve the case. (PB)

A Casimir, elected to Poland's kingship, resigns after two years to be a peasant and sleep nights. (PB)

Tale of an attempted fraud. A tourist at a German watering place is provoked into a duel - and persuaded to send his opponent's wife a generous cheque when he fears he has killed him. Only a chance meeting in Paris reveals the plot. Slight. (PB)

Depiction of a mob lynching of a prisoner - a murderer is hung. (PB)

American family tale. Mark Hunter returns to Boston and New York after thirty years in China to find his sister entrapped in worldly society, and the son of his dead brother unknown. An encounter wth a poor girl at a church and later at a pawnbroker's discovers his nephew - an inventor - and Mark finds his true family ties ... Light; slightly sententious. (PB)

Gentle horror story. A mysterious and gentle woman rents a house in a quiet village but refuses to mix with the neighbours - maintaining a friendship at a distance only with the narrator. She explains that her child is mentally diminished and can not bear strangers - but when she is discovered murdered in the house with a broken pair of handcuffs dangling from the ceiling of a back room, it is clear there was another explanation ... Well-written, interesting blend of the genteel and the terrible. (PB)