AustLit

An Irish under-nurse in a Melbourne house discovers the housekeeper's plots to marry her employer, widowed by his wife's suicide. A ghost in the nursery is eventually unmasked but too late to prevent Mrs Inchkeith's revenge on the sleeping children. Suggestions of sexual improprieties confusingly alluded to. (PB)

A farming family stake and lose everything on their hunt for oil - but at the very last minute strike it rich. Plain tale; probably US. (PB)

A father's harshness sends his son from home to college despite his mother's heart disease. Her death causes the son to vow never to see his father again but an illness 10 years later witnesses their reunion and the son's change of heart and marriage. Sentimentally shallow. (PB)

Account of an Englishman convicted for robbery near his home in Bolton. Transported to WA he escapes to Sydney where he again turns to crime and is sentenced to Darlinghurst Gaol. From there he escapes to Melbourne until the narrator recaptures him and brings him back to Sydney - with the help of his pistol. (PB)

A Country sexton explains to a visitor that the church is closed due to a seemingly unending series of baptisms of the recently arrived Banks family. Humour. (PB)

Paterfamilias concedes to his children's pleas and tells them a tale of the Ballarat goldfields when he was commissioner. A miner is killed for accusing Yankee Bill of cheating at cards and his wife loses her mind when she turns up seeking him from England several months later. Solid. (PB)

Anecdote of Booth playing Richard III while drunk. Theatre humour. (PB)

Romance. Flora Archibald refuses to marry Victor Forsythe because he is rich and idle. He hires himself as a haymaker on her uncle's farm for the summer and his work impresses her sufficiently with its manliness, that when he saves her from drowning she accepts his proposal. Pleasant with faint satirical tinge. (PB)

Anecdotes of timber contracts - one evaded by guile and one enforced. (PB)

Sketchy unlikely romance of a poor English miner/farmer in Victoria who - urged by his daughter - saves the life of the man who cheated him in England. The man returns the money and they all sail for England, the two young people falling in love, and the father drowning in the shipwreck from which the daughter is saved. (PB)

The difficulties involved in catching a rooster for dinner. Humour. (PB)

A husband and wife agree to prepare separately for a trip to see who is the quickest - the husband losing in chaos. Humour - slight. (PB)

Humorous (!) anecdote of a man's anger which abates at the sight of his six-foot adversary. (PB)

A rough steamer ride on Lake Michigan. Humour. (PB)

Results when a fruit seller hangs a basketful of cayenne peppers labelled 'New Zealand Cherries' near the front of his stall. (PB)

Description of a visit to a prison for political exiles in Siberia by Robert Lemke. Barbarous conditions. (PB)