'A Retrieved Reformation' is a short story by O. Henry first published in The Cosmopolitan Magazine, April 1903. It describes the events which lead up to the reformation of an ex-convict. Read on to know more... A guard came to the prison shoe-shop, where Jimmy Valentine was assiduously stitching uppers, and escorted him to the front office. There the warden handed Jimmy his pardon, which had been signed that morning by the governor. Jimmy took it in a tired kind of way. He had served nearly ten months of a four-year sentence. He had expected to stay only about...