AustLit

Maggie Mills, eldest daughter of a farmer in Victoria, contemplates her response to a proposal by life-long friend and son of a neighbouring station owner, Frank Nicol. She contemplates saying no, but a dream of his trip to Europe and his encounter with and marriage to a beautiful woman reveals to her the true state of her heart ... She says yes. (PB)

A systematic youth has his plans rendered unnecessary when his proposal is not accepted. (PB)

Two young men, cousins, emigrate from England to Victoria and travel to a cattle station on the Goulburn River for 'colonial experience' before buying a station of their own. Aboriginal attacks on cattle cause one of the cousins to ride to a neighbour for advice. The appearance of his ghost causes his cousin, the narrator, to ride after him. He discovers the body pressed through the heart by a spear. He collapses, and recovers from an attack of brain fever to the horror of reality. Slight emphasis on the existence of ghosts despite all rational explanations. (PB)

Domestic and social humour. The plans of a friend of a new Lord Mayor to attend the inaugural ball without his wife are spoiled when she is sent a spare ticket from her sister, sees him there and marches him home. (PB)

An English traveller forced by weather to spend the night in an old man's cottage in Somersetshire hears a tale of 1840. A farmer's son who steals the pretty blacksmith's daughter from a poor but honest farm hand is cursed by the labourer to suffer on the first of May each year. He loses his wife in childbirth one year later, and his beloved son to the hangman twenty one years after that. And the old cottager dies that night - also the first of May ... (PB)

A government schoolteacher in a small town, Wild Duck Flat, in the Goulburn Valley of Victoria is dismissed for laxness with discipline and addiction to alcohol. The local notables arrange his dismissal through the department but when a registered letter and his replacement teacher, a pretty young woman, arrive his reactions are unexpected. He confesses to being an English gentleman who left England for Australia ten years before rather than marry a girl chosen for him in childhood. And his female replacement is the girl he left behind, who had done the same thing. Satirical sketch of small town life, parochialisation, the temperance movement and school children. (PB)

Domestic humour. A small boy's information decides a husband to return home and seek reconciliation with his wife after an argument - but he forgot his mother-in-law. (PB)

Reminiscence of the diggings. A new digger and his niece camp near an established camp of four diggers. Their new neighbour informs the four honest digging mates that his niece poisoned her father and is now attempting to poison him in revenge for preventing her marriage with a dishonest chemist who procured her drugs. The chemist in the guise of an old swagman is injured and arrested but poisons himself; and the girl is committed to an asylum. (PB)

In dialogue form. A couple reveal to their child how wars start. (PB)

An Edinburgh doctor's test of courage for boys applying to be his assistant involves a skeleton and ventriloquism. One lad finally passes. (PB)

Australian 18-year-old girl is in the garden awaiting her fiancee who had promised to return a year before. His ghost and hers dance together instead - and she feels she will meet him soon (probably in death but this is unclear). (PB)

Jenkins at the club toasts man as lord of creation and woman born to obey. His return to his wife reveals the true state of affairs. (PB)