Two seldom-read writers plus an excellent Wharton story in 50 Great Short Stories

Three stories from the early 20th century in the anthology 50 Great Short Stories (1952), two of them by authors once famous but today little read: first, O. Henry's story The Man Higher Up, from which we can see why he was once highly popular (and the namesake for the eponymous award) but today seems quaint and beside the point. This story, written in pseudo tough-guy patois is about 3 thieves, one a burglar, the second a scammer (selling useless products in small towns), the 3rd a financier, and it's a bit of a contest to see which scheme is the most successful - but it all feels so remote from the present and so stage-managed that it's hard to see why any contemporary reader would be much interested. The next story, The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse, by William Saroyan, has the air of a memoir-story, recalling a event from the narrator's childhood in farming community in California populated mainly by Armenian immigrants. In some ways this is a forerunner - immigrant stories and memoir-like stories are a staple of short fiction today - and it other ways a throwback, reminding me of tales from the shtetl by Singer et al., but, like O.Henry, Saroyan was a highly regarded literary figure in the 40s and 50s and is now seldom read: he showed the way toward a new type of fiction, but if this story is typical his writing was exaggerated, caricatured, and not so engaging. The next story is the best of the group by far and by an author his popularity and reputation have only increased since over the past century - Edith Wharton's The Other Two. She was personally close to Henry James, and we can see, in this story and others, her careful development of character, attention to the nuances of social position, ability to create and establish a setting distinct in time and place (among the elite in the meritocratic early 20th century Manhattan). This story is beautifully nuanced and tells of a man's complex relationship with the two previous spouses of his young wife - worth reading then, and today.