AustLit

On singleness of purpose. (PB)

Exemplary tale of Sydney teacher, Peter Grant, indulged by his parents (particularly his mother!) who wreaks his temper continually on his wife. She accepts the treatment meekly until her sister arrives to visit ... Her quiet revolt and the much louder one of his ill-treated National School pupils bring him the fate he deserves. Excellent study of domestic despotism marred slightly by sententious tone. (PB)

A Scottish postman in a New Zealand town is rescued from a snow storm and believes he has been given the gift of song. A church elder, he is persuaded by three young wits to prod awake members of the congregation - and a colourful scene results. Rough humour; thin. (PB)

An itinerant razor-strap seller's exaggerated claim. (PB)

Tale heard of a steamer between Melbourne and Tasmania. A senior master at a Melbourne grammar school recounts his public school days in England and the practical joke played by an army friend for which he took the blame and resigned his commission. Very British! Includes brief mention of a Victorian circus. (PB)

The narrator recalls the months he spent studying for an examination in a little Victorian township - Newford - in the 1860s. He often passed a deserted house and finding it occupied one day discovered some of its history. It was, in the late 1840s, the farm of a gloomy reclusive man who one day brought home a haughty wife. Their ceaseless quarrelling ended with her mysterious disappearance but a body was never found. Slow. (PB)

English anecdotes of Sussex and Hertfordshire showing the quiet and saucy natures of boys. (PB)

A husband's jealousy of his wife's meetings with a handsome dissipated man are resolved when he discovers at pistol-point that he is her brother - a forger seeking assistance from her. Competent. (PB)

A hunting trip taken to distract the narrator from a lover's quarrel leads him into the hands of bank robber - and he is saved through the resource of his St Bernard. The chief robber is his romantic rival so that issue is resolved too. Thin. (PB)

A recluse who survives by selling animal skins ventures onto a nearby farm seeking flour and there recognises the wife he abandoned - now a drunkard - and his son. She strikes her son and the old man offers him shelter, revealing his identity later. The woman is murdered and the son blamed but he hermit's testimony helps save him ... Gory. (PB)

Series of oppositional short anecdotes revealing how an event or object elicits contrary responses. (PB)

The anger of the recipient on opening a parcel to find it contians a cobble stone. USA. (PB)