AustLit

Domestic. A husband ignores his wife's pleas that he check on noises downstairs - and he leaves her to find the cat. Light humour. (PB)

Ironic bush station tale. The arrival of a new chum from Melbourne causes mirth and frustration to the manager and stockmen on an up-country station. Their various pranks and tiger-snake yarns are returned with interest when he vanishes the next day with their valuable and best horses - he is an absconding Melbourne forger and criminal. Includes Aboriginal characters, especially an 'uncouth' washerwoman, and attempts at Aboriginal pidgin. Patronising attitude. Very neat ironical inversion of the 'new chum' tale - 'The biter bit' etc. Well-written humour. (PB)

Tale of prospecting for gold in Arizona and the Mojave mountains. A successful prospector loses his memory for three years after nearly dying in the desert but recovers it when he and his party accidentally stumble upon a cave when taking refuge from an Apache attack. Slight; factual flavour; mechanical style. (PB)

An English civil servant in India is treed by a tiger, a narrow escaped into the upper branches. (PB)

US romantic humour. An engagement is nearly broken off when a yacht 'Ellen' is mistaken for a human rival. (PB)

An engagement is ruptured for a time through Harry's discovery of his fiancee's close attachment to Willie Fulton - and renewed when he discovers Willie is a female schoolfriend. Light; urban. (PB)

A Paris chief of police attempts to prevent the contraband trade in Swiss watches - and is outwitted by a Geneva watch-maker. Bribery reveals the ruse. Slight. (PB)

A Jewish rabbi is consoled for the loss of his two noble and learned sons by his wife's wisdom. Pathos, piety. (PB)

Satirical exemplary tale of a young Australian husband reduced to misery and penury by his wife's addiction to bargains adventured in the newspapers. Wooden. (PB)

English tale of an encounter on a train between a judge and a lunatic who claims to have securities for the theft of which others are to be tried. The lunatic is recaptured and the judge finds the accused men guilty - but doubts lead him to the asylum where he establishes that the lunatic had stolen them. Irony of judicial pomposity and certitude, and lunatic truth ... Slight. Familiar themes: crime, justice, madness. (PB)

A Californian arrest, trial, conviction, appeal and verdict set aside. A stage coach robber is saved from lynching by his mother's letter, bidding him to hurry home. Slight; sentiment and rough cowboys etc. (PB)

A Market Street share broker murders his brother and makes it appear as suicide in an attempt to escape his creditors and the brother's balckmail. Detective's work, and office boy's reluctant evidence, and the discovery of the share-broker's body disfigured exactly as his brother's, closes the case. (PB)

Tedious moral tale of a youth disillusioned by a broken romance who meets an ancient sage in a vision at Pompeii who persuades him that immortality of soul is higher than that of the body, and he should return to life and duty. Was it just a dream? Thinks not. (PB)

Australian station romance between a Sydney boarding school girl returned home and a friend of her brother's. Sparring turns to love when they are rescued from a bushfire by an Aboriginal station hand. Light; patronising description of Aborigine with some ironic commentary on white man's love. Also direct authorial irony, for example in comparison of bushfire and the fires of passion. (PB)