AustLit

English romance. Cecil, an artist, saves a respectable but unemployed girl from a street bully and after her story is heard in court and published he seeks to marry her. Society is outraged and only a friend's intervention saves them from becoming outcasts by marrying. Two years later, much better established in his work, he marries a clergyman's daughter - with the same friend's help - and only they know her true identity. Unusual. (PB)

Brief retelling of the German legend of the Rhine and the beautiful water maiden whose songs lure men to their deaths. (PB)

An army surgeon's encounter with a madman in an English Army Lunatic Asylum - and the quick-thinking necessary to save his life. (PB)

Anecdote of Horace Creely of the New York Tribune and his response to a reader who threatens to stop his paper. (PB)

US frontier tale of two brothers chased home by wolves at night. Told by a grandfather to his grandchildren. (PB)

A vote to admit women members is rejected on the basis that no true woman wants women's rights. (PB)

A doctor accompanies his dying patient to Nice where his sweetheart is governess to a family visiting the city. Not only does he win the girl but reunites her with his patient, her grandfather, who gives her an inheritance. (PB)

Romance blooms in Dublin at a baby's christening. The godfather mistakes the woman his friend has told him he must marry, and a series of amusing social mistakes follow. Light; domestic atmosphere; humorous. (PB)

Ann rescues a man from death on the hot dusty plains near her father's station, 100 miles from the Lachlan River. The kindness eventually wins his forgiveness for her father - his own brother who had had him sentenced to prison for a crime he did not commit. An overseer with the DTs takes a revenge of his own, and the identity of Ann's true father revealed. (PB)

Anecdote of an heraldic stationer's practical joke played upon a nouveau riche gentleman. Very thin. (PB)

Pauline Lacy, the unmarried sister of an English public school master, misinterprets the questions of another master as the prelude to a proposal. She seeks a position with a female friend in the country when nothing further happens - but the confession of her heart's attachment eventually ends their friendship. When the master goes to woo the girl he has all the time loved, she is engaged to another and Lucy marries rich but elderly Sir Joseph Osborne. Interesting little tale with a twist of romantic misunderstandings and a spice of social satire. Misinterpretation; spinsterhood; female friendship and romantic illusion are briefly and lightly treated. (PB)

A census-taker has difficulty in discovering a widow's true age. Anecdotal. (PB)