A. B. “Banjo” Paterson’s humorous stories and sketches. A. B. Paterson. 2000.

“By the way, you would help me greatly by contributing from time to time some perky comments on social affairs - paragraphs containing a little good nature and a little ginger.”

So wrote J. F. Archibald to “Banjo” Paterson and, thus encouraged, the much-esteemed ballad ist turned his hand to prose. He was again successful, and his pieces started to appear first in the Bulletin and later in other papers and journals of the time. These stories saw the creation of some of his classic characters - he bush liar in “His Masterpiece,” the “cast-iron canvasser” invented to resist the abuse meted out to door-to-door salesmen, the bush “spielers” in “Bill and Jim Get Taken Down,” the racecourse savant of “The Oracle” and many more.