A well-crafted short story is a pleasure to read. I used to read a lot of them in my youth and some of the well-known practitioners of this art are O. Henry and Guy de Maupassant. But one of my favorite authors was W. Somerset Maugham. I still recall one of my favorites and that was The Luncheon. I remembered it so well after about five decades, down to individual sentences, and for some reason this story popped into my mind recently and I was delighted to find that it is available online.
There are a few aspects of this story that have not aged well but it still remains a wonderful example of a well-crafted short story. Those of you who have ever been at an event where one is so worried about the size of the bill one would have to pay at the end that it consumes one’s thoughts will appreciate this story all the more.