AustLit

A miser's attempt to cheat a poor farmer's widow of £20 (for a cow already paid for) backfires - with the help of a ghostly arm. (PB)

Elsie Miller and Gervaise Colton are separated when she inherits £10 000 from her aunt, but a railway accident and her guardian's unwise speculation alter their relatives for the better. (PB)

A boarder at a girl's school in Harrow is the means of reuniting a patient but poor lady and her lover estranged for 20 years. Well written, tone well sustained. (PB)

On the lack of women's power. (PB)

Anecdotes of the devices men were driven to to recover money owed to them but which the laws of the early 1850s would not allow them to prove. (PB)

Tale of Francis Linton, a young man of small fortune and middling wit who falls in love with an actress. He also falls into debt and after she marries a Lord and his mother rescues him from London he settles down to his father's pickle business. (PB)

Set at a police station in a country district on the old Sydney road, near the Seymour diggings. A battered woman's body is left at the police station in a box, and the path of discovery leads to a jealous wife and a brutal husband ... (PB)

On the silent bushman, the talking bushman and bushman polite - Scotch, English and Irish respectively. And lastly on the perfect bushman. On the social behaviour of these types in general. (PB)

A poor but handsome and honest sailor returning from Canton to New York saves the daughter of a rich young widow from drowning. His goodness is amply rewarded with a hand and a heart. (PB)

On the coutesy with which this refreshment is provided - and its nature. (PB)

Observations on passers-by on a Melbourne street over a week : a milkman with the call of a Red Indian; hard workers; school children; 'lovers' notes and nosegays and merchants' hearts; poor little rag-gatherers and street waifs; buses and roses; an old woman forced to sell small wares; a drunkard; and a wedding. (PB)

A thin black cat is adopted by a young miller whose mill is no longer working and who has barely enough money to survive. By pulling the white hairs from the cat's head his fortunes and his will are steadily restored until there is only one hair remaining. Set in the kingdom of Nomansland bordering on the mythical Ocean, the principality of Bosh and the empire of Fancy. (PB)

Short description of a battle between an eider duck and a raven. (Not presented as a full story - it appears as a 'miscellaneous' note.) (PB)

A farmer purchases a worthless block of neighbouring land after a visiting clergyman dreams of silver buried there. The true nature of the mineral and the clergyman are ultimately revealed ... (PB)

A traveller returns from the south seas with two island children and a tattooed son of a king. He decides to put on a show but his prince dies from a combination of eau de cologne, kerosene and superstition. An oddly fascinating tale mixing fancy, poignancy, cliche, realism and sentimentality. (PB)