Mr loveday's little outing

r. Waugh's collection of stories carries the subtitle "and other sad stories." Obviously this is a joke. For these stories--most of them trick stories --all indicate the author's rather sardonic sense of humor. People will be fools, he seems to be saying, and, moreover, most people get their own way regardless of how destructive their way may be. Sentimentality is ruled out by this author as not useful to most persons, but it is nevertheless shown to be a kind of self-delusion in most characters, an emotion short-circuited, as it were, by the desire to survive pleasantly. People can and do rationalize anything. This, surely, is Evelyn Waugh's feeling.
Most of the tales in this book are short; almost all of them have a surprise ending. They are stories of middle-class English people and of a few rather worn-out English aristocrats, rather superficial stories, on the whole, of rather superficial lives. Mr. Waugh is economical in writing. He knows how to get a person or a situation down in a few words. There is the first story of the lunatic, confined for years because he once committed murder. A well-meaning young woman, just a bit sentimental, obtains his release. He is, she argues, sane, and true enough, he has been sane for twenty years or more. What does the man do once he is released? It is easy to guess. He commits murder again in precisely the same way as before. Back he comes to the asylum quite content.
There is the story of the man who meant to have a scene with his wife but fell asleep instead and thus condoned her offense. There is the tale of the old lady who reads naughty novels but because they are much less naughty than life. There is the yarn about a girl loved for her nose. Her lover, to keep her faithful, gives her a jealous dog. The dog bites the lady's nose. She remains faithful and a spinster. There is an account of a honeymoon sad for a man, but completely satisfactory for a woman. There is a story of a mother turning completely upside-