A seeming crazed young man appears unannounced at Norbert Pfister's cabin, hinting that the wronged father must be avenged. Gentle Author loses his composure when his visiting friend crushes his lone friend, a solitary beetle. Sun Cheng, the inscrutable man from Manchuria, treats his tormentors in the fashion of his forbears. A dutiful daughter learns to know a side of the father she never fathomed. All fourteen tales describe adventurous events, without resorting to gratuitous violence. Neither are they salacious or fashionable, and even less mawkish.