AustLit

Recalls selecting a winning Irish lottery prize as a child in London with her father. The money perished but a dinner service remained. Themes: father-daughter; money; gambling. (PB)

Horrific encounter with escaped madman in a London railway carriage crossing London Bridge to New Cross. His mania is for travelling to the moon. (PB)

A London washerwoman's humiliating revenge on a penniless society man who refused to pay her charges - exposing his penury to fellow dinner guests. Humour. (PB)

English racing tale of the 1870s. The narrator, then a young and naive clerk just come into an inheritance, bets on a horse hespite the advice of the kindly gentleman he shares dinner with. The old man, the owner of the favourite who loses, in fact saves his bet. Light. (PB)

Very brief. A widower fends off the 'comfort' offered by a former lover and widow. Humour. (PB)

US romance of a politician's daughter engaged to a British nobleman and diplomat in Washington who breaks off the engagement when he tries to prevent her attending a dissipated ball. He rescues her from a rape but marries another and she becomes a nun. She helps his gambling wife in New Orleans, nurses her on her sickbed and is at last reunited with him. Light, melodramatic plot. (PB)

Tragic social allegory of an innocent tabby cat adopted by a refined lady who offers to teach her manners but only succeeds in laying the blame for her misdeeds on the younger cat. Beaten by the cook and cut by glass she is eventually drowned in a tank for catching a canary. Touching; strong class ironies. (PB)

The Governor of Gibraltar fails to catch out an officer who he saw away from his post because the man caught the General's own carriage back to the guard. His eventual confession amuses the general ... Character and humour. (PB)

The disappearance of a beautiful young girl with her jewellery and her father's gold is explained as elopement with a dubious suitor - but Trooper Gibson suspects her murder after visiting an old basket weaver and his wife. A double murder emerges disguised as a swagman, he watches the old man - disguised as his own wife who he had killed - pull the girl's body from the water ... the girl's father disowned her when she took his money and lost her 'innocense'. (PB)

Trip of five persons to the caves from Tumut. Landscape, flies, Tumut River; lunch camp at Talbingo; Monaro and Campbell's Hotel overnight; Yarrangobilly and the Caves - visited on a guided tour ... Pleasant sociable description of trip; dawning of awareness of need for preservation by government briefly mentioned. (PB)