Cirrus@Austlit

Historically based narrative of the false accusation, torture and execution of a maid for theft from her employer in Berlin in 1730. The guilty party was in fact his wife who eventually committed suicide. (PB)

How the milliner's art prevents the narrator from seeing the G & S operetta - obscuring his view. Humour; includes parodies of the G & S songs relating to bonnets. (PB)

Story of youthful love braving noble ambition and greed and eloping to Scotland. A maiden aunt's narrative of her niece's love for her soldier cousin and her final refusal to marry the rich but cruel nobleman her father favours. Traditional plot competently written. (PB)

A young constable in a Victorian country station (reader of 'The Detective's Album' in The Australian Journal) follows the local blacksmith's disappearance and discovers his murdered body in a charcoal heap at the hut of local illicit distillers. With the help of his sweetheart's younger brother and a fellow trooper he captures the guilty brothers who tied up their mother and left her with the constable whom they had earlier captured. Postscript conclusion describes the mother's frenzied axe murder of the blacksmith - more guilty than her sons ... (PB)

Melancholy tale of the sad life of a self-sacrificing man cheerfully making way for others and never being thanked. (PB)

Adventure tale. An American is robbed of his client's $10 000 in gold on a Mexican stagecoach - through the cleverness of a beautiful woman who shares the ride, and her brigand husband - also a Mexican colonel. (PB)

Romantic tragedy and spirit tale set in France. A letter left to a friend after his death reveals the secret of a French soldier's life: his youthful love for a poor girl, his father's determination that he should wed another and the poor girl's suicide. After a solitary life of courting death as a soldier he is crippled, and during the next five years is comforted by a female spirit who finally reveals herself as his dead love. (PB)

Abbreviated tale of a widow separated from her child by her employer's 'benevolence'. The child sickens in hospital and the mother is not allowed time off to see it when it is dying. Some sentiment but generally a strong picture of the penniless servant's 'Gethsemane'. (PB)

Humorous dialogue where the recipient's smart answers lose him the payment of a bill. [Possibly set in an editor's office.] (PB)

Woman's honour and self-denial prevents young man's folly. An English country clergyman's daughter saves a visiting London lawyer from breaking his engagement to another by refusing to accept his love - and thus proving herself truly 'A Man's Friend.' Pleasantly light tale with 'deeper' comments on the dangers of flirtation and the nature of a true women's love. (PB)

Description of a public hanging; designed to show that it averts crime; anti the abolition of public execution. (PB)

The nephew and godchild of an opinionated but kindly merchant finally win his consent to their marriages to comparatively poor partners - despite his wish that they should marry each other. Pleasant slight tale, particularly the account of the meetings of the nephew and his girl, temporarily a day governess across the road though of the best family!

Romance rekindles when former American lovers meet at a European city on summer vacation. Her children's illness and her sorrow convince the doctor she jilted for a richer man years before to forgive her. [Includes a passing reference to the ageing effects of visiting Australia for even a year or two.] (PB)