Perhaps no other American writer has gained and lost as much critical favor as quickly as O. Henry. Bruce Watson summed it up best in his 1997 Smithsonian article: "When he died in 1910, O. Henry was in the pantheon of American writers. These days critics regard him as a clever hack." O. Henry received some of his strongest praise for his stories about New York, which include "Mammon and the Archer." O. Henry published many of these stories under contract for the New York World, completing one story each week from 1903 to 1905. New Yorkers loved these stories, and O. Henry quickly became a legend in the city. O. Henry's reputation increased even more in the eyes of both critics and popular readers in 1906 with the publication of The Four Million, which collected several of his New York stories, including "Mammon and the Archer."

O. Henry's fame in...