AustLit

Anecdotes of the Prussian king's kindness. (PB)

A burglar encounters a child on Christmas Eve and she reforms him - and later asks her father for work. (PB)

Practical joke played by Sothern on his friend Toole while they dined in a restaurant. (PB)

A vacation traveller makes a trip to Rockymount, site of a mythical buried treasure of Captain Kidd. But the treasure he finds he decides to marry. (PB)

Family tale set in the countryside on the Mitchell River near Lake King. A struggling squatter finds new pasture for his cattle one dry January through his daughter's belief in fairies and her hunt for them. (PB)

A man pays for his wife's Christmas gifts to him. (PB)

A Philadelphia orphan takes a position as governess at a large country house to improve her health after two years school teaching. She quickly warms to her loving but deformed charge, and the child's widowed father is attracted to her. The schemes of his mother-in-law and sister-in-law to marry him to their own family again involve them dismissing the governess - but true love triumphs. (PB)

On the value of making New Year's resolutions even if they are all broken. (PB)

On helping others at Christmas. Possibly directed at women, eg. hospital visits. (PB)

Humorous narrative of a husband's unwillingness to offend his wife when she bought him cheap cigars early in their marriage - and how he has been reduced to various stratagems to deal with them ever since. (PB)

A robin finds shelter in a church at Christmas and provides an illustration for a sermon on the Father's care for his creatures. (PB)

Tale of the Victorian mounted police in 1853, recalled in England in 1888. The disappearance of a gentlemanly corporal reveals publicly the coarse drunkenness of his wife and his love for a refined and beautiful governess on a nearby station. Narrated by the then young officer in charge of the troop in the Victorian country town. Involves descriptions of local social life, detective work, and references to the local Chinese camp. (PB)

A Christmas reunion in the US for an aged couple and their spoiled daughter who had run away years before with a German tutor and who the father had disowned. A baby in a Christmas box initiates the reconciliation. (PB)

Romance of mature years. An affectionate old maid is the preferred choice of a vicar's children for a new mother - and he follows their advice. (PB)

Tale set in the days before becoming a mounted trooper. Returning from droving cattle to Melbourne the narrator comes across a bush inn run by an old sea captain, his bosun now turning to drink, and a rough young man. He becomes very fond of the captain and returns at Christmas to find he has disappeared. With the help of the young man and a ghost he discovers the old man murdered by the bosun while drunk ... (PB)

A suitor's questioning of his prospective bride's domestic abilities provoke a spirited response. (PB)