AustLit

An anecdote of two instances of mistaken identity. (PB)

A drunk young man mistakes a store dummy for a friend and procures a hotel bed for him. (PB)

A wife's arrangement with a ship's captain to deliver a letter from her to her husband every evening of his voyage. (PB)

An arrangement by the US President-elect's private secretary in earlier days with a man about to be hung is recounted. (PB)

A young woman has to choose which man to marry - love or money. She wears the gifts of both - but only to marry for love herself and restore her aunt's lover to her. (PB)

A suitor's bumbled attempts to ask his prospective father-in-law for permission to marry his daughter. US humour - and two months after the wedding he wishes he had not married at all. (PB)

The result of an experiment by two prospective brides to see whether their suitors will give up tobacco and their clubs for them. The spirit and not the law. (PB)

The narrator's agreement for a woman's right to flirt falters when it is put to the test by another suitor - but a forgotten hat and a summerhouse remedy the misunderstanding. (PB)

A young husband mistakes a tenant's baby left in his office for his sister-in-law's child, and looks after it as instructed. The misunderstanding nearly destroys his marriage ... 'man with baby' genre and mistaken assumptions. (PB)

Outback station romance. A picnic at some volcanic caves precipitates a proposal from the friend of the narrator's brother, and imprisonment in a cave when a rock collapses over the entrance. Six weeks later, recovering from her fall and the resultant brain fever, the heroine greets her fiancee. (PB)

The death of a frontiersman in the US - in a lone cabin with his partner for company and visions of his boyhood home and parents. (PB)

A swagman catches a lift with a travelling bush hawker and when the latter refuses to join his criminal schemes trusses him up to rob him and hang him. Somehow the swagman gets caught in his own noose and dies a terrible death while the hawker is unable to move.

Domestic estrangement through a child's death. A husband's insistence that his wife leave their young child at home while they take a six week trip abroad causes their eventual separation when the child dies of croup during their absence. Illness, a new child and their love reunite the pair at last despite pride and a cold mother-in-law. Interesting sketch of the husband's nature by the wife. (PB)

Romance in the settled Australian countryside is disturbed for several months when May Gillespie sees her lover kissing another woman and he refuses to explain. Mutual pining, a trip to Tasmania for recuperation, a demand for a kiss by a youth at a stream crossing from which her lover rescues her, and a 'twin brother' eloping to Africa finally reconcile the pair. (PB)

In a worked out diggings town on the Melbourne Road in 1858 a storekeeper loves the daughter of a miserly hill-dweller who refuses to consider him as a son-in-law. The arrival of a dubious acquaintance from earlier digging days who is determined to track down the secret gold claim he believes the old man has. But the old man kills his young son in a fit of anger and the storekeeper kills him likewise - eventually being convicted as a murderer. His friend marries the girl and they prosper on the old man's gold and the store-keeper's savings. (PB)

A Cornish miner's widow grieves that she refused to make peace with him that morning as he left for work. (PB)

Practical romance with a twist. A successful middle-aged businessman decides to marry his Scottish housekeeper when he discovers she has inherited £5000. Too late he discovers the legacy belongs to her cousin - but he is comfortable at least. Wry tale. (PB)

A stranger in a farming area of southern USA is nearly hung for stealing mules on a boy's evidence. Only swift talking and a witness save him. (PB)

Romance of a miniature and its history. A chance meeting in a pawn-broker's shop introduces the narrator to Tessa Vaccaro, an Italian immigrant whose father, a violin player from Florence, is dying. Finding her orphaned the narrator and his wife take her into their home where they learn the story of her mother, banished years before for unfaithfulness. A priest sends a nun to comfort the girl on her deathbed - and it is her mother! (PB)

Havoc is wreaked upon the Burdocks, their washing and their backyard by an enormous goat. (PB)