In a radiant land lives a sad people,"" said the writer Prado of his native Brazil. The contributors to this collection all exemplify this since the ""Brazilian sadness"" filters through even the more humorous stories, whereas in Mario de Andrade's It Can Hurt Plenty it becomes almost unbearable. For obvious economic and social reasons, and perhaps for some less obvious antecedents in traditional Spanish melodrama, misery dogs the Brazilian writer. But the moral of The Happiest Couple in the World validates it as a part of life. These stories of the Brazilian modernist movement represent various classes, various regions, and their ""local color,"" a by-product of literary realism, provides a good introduction to La Vida in Brazil. A neglected literature, as well.