“Mold of the World”
In the first meeting with the botanist, the narrator suggests a correspondence between the life cycles of mold and that of humanity, but the botanist rejects this by asserting mold lacks the heart and soul humans possess which allows for art and language. At the second meeting, the narrator bears witness to the “history of humankind” which replicates the development of the mold and is forced to ask where the arts and learning are with the ironic understanding that while humans profess to being owners of not-so-lonely hearts, their limited evolution calls belief into question.
“The Waistcoat”
This story features an entire plot constructed on an O. Henry type of ironic twist. The owner of the waistcoat is slowly succumbing to illness which is making him lose weight and vigor with almost each passing day. He had been altering the suit in order to make it continue to fit so that his wife would not worry over him. At the same time, she had been secretly altering it in order that he would not become despondent and lose all hope.
“Shades” (sometimes titled “Shadows”)
The opening of this very short tale situates darkness as eternally existing, but which is forced to find hiding places during the day or when illumination is provided. Thus, darkness has the power to become almost perpetual or, alternatively, suffers the weakness to become almost non-existent. The heroes of this battle against the darkness in which so much evil can run much more freely are those charged with providing that illumination. Heroes such as those anonymous men who illuminate cities by lighting streetlamps before electricity. One of those heroic lamplighters if the central figure of the story whose death goes unnoticed and winds up buried in an unpainted coffin in the poorest section of the cemetery.
“The Living Telegraph”
This story begins with a Countess visiting an orphanage and noticing some kids fighting over a tattered book. A timeline is then developed in which a nun explains to her how the orphans crave something to read but there is no money which leads to the Countless describing this situation to a Councilor who in turn tells a very part-time and smell-level philanthropist about it who passes it on to a newspaper editor who writes a human-interest article red by a poor factory worker who donates some books. The narrator concludes that this series of events is like a telegraph in which the main station is orphanage that sent a message ultimately received and acted upon by the poor factory worker. Ironically, even though they had the most opportunity to give while incurring the least hurt, everyone in between are deemed to be nothing but telegraph poles.
“Staś's Little Adventure”
In addition to writing stories that are replete with ironic, Prus is also very handy at the ironic turn of phrase. Actually, this story contains a number of examples of wittily ironic one-liners such as this one occurring early in the first description of the young title character:
"In addition, he possesses a yellow cradle painted with black and green flowers, and a cart whose only defect is that each wheel seems to run in a different direction."
