AustLit

On a Pacific railroad journey the narrator meets a man on his way to Salt Lake City to kill a friend turned Mormon who has married so many times he is bankrupting the traveller in wedding presents. (PB)

A father pines away after his son is thrown from his horse and killed. On the eve of his own death, the man tells his friends how if he had listened to a dream that both he and his son had the night before the accident and given him a seat in the family carriage he could have averted the accident. Plan telling of supernatural. (PB)

Melodramatic family tragedy set in Melbourne and the USA. Charlie Linton steals £100 from his father to pay a gambling debt and his brother Willie offers to help him replace it. He is caught in the act while Charlie is in Sydney and leaves home for the US to protect him. Charlie learns of his sacrifice too late and searches for him for years, only to find him on his death bed. Charlie returns to Melbourne to seek his father's forgiveness but dies after being thrown from his horse. Unlikely. (PB)

A rich but coarsely-grained man offers a two year loan to the adoptive parents of a foundling, secretly telling her that she must marry him or he will demand full payment when the time is up. She goes to work as a teacher to earn the money and meets her future husband. Unconvincingly sweet. (PB)

Biographical anecdotes of Lord Nelson's tender-heartedness to his sailors. (Dramatised.) (PB)

Set on the Inglewood diggings in the early 1870s, a Chinese informant alerts the police to the likely theft of copper plates from one of the large mining companies. He expects a reward as promised but the police end up tussling with each other in the darkness - so both parties end up with nothing and the Chinese thieves secure their plates. Solid. Makes reference to the debate over Chinese labour, mining, etc. (PB)

Laura Lamont resolves never to marry a widower or a doctor after Dr Thorne advises her to more active. As she becomes more involved in helping her overworked neighbour with her children they meet more often and romance follows. Pleasantly predictable. (PB)

An American on his way from London to the country village where he is to marry his English sweetheart is accosted in the train by one he thinks is a robber. Instead he finds himself accused of theft and is saved from incarceration only when his accusor is revealed to be insane. Brief. (PB)

A young man's frustrating attempts to learn the cornet to please his adored one - and the embarrassment he suffers at his first public recital. (PB)

Lillian Butterfield's faith in her fiancee refuses to be shaken by the gossip of a ladies' sewing circle, but when his horse stops there on a drive past her fears are aroused. All is explained happily. Pleasant. (PB)

A motherless girl finds the dying bushranger Thunderbolt in a cave on his father's station and promises to help shelter him from the police. She asks her father's help but he betrays her trust as he had her mother's - and she is shot by accident. (PB)

A fox attempts to persuade some fowls that a peace treaty had been concluded among the animals - they should come down from their roost. A wily rooster reveals his duplicity. (PB)

A mother's scheming nearly ruins two romances through an intercepted letter and subtle falsehoods. But true hearts finally win out over covetousness. (PB)

On male characters encountered on railway journeys. (PB)

On the origin of various phrases in the English language ... English not Australian. (PB)