Rebellion and Failure - “A Burglar's Christmas”
Willie illustrates arbitrary rebelliousness based on his historical tenacities and contemporary state. Cather illuminates: “Yet he was but four and twenty, this man he looked even younger and he had a father some place down East who had been very proud of him once. Well, he had taken his life into his own hands, and this was what he had made of it... He could remember the hopeful things they used to say about him at college in the old days, before he had cut away and begun to live by his wits, and he found courage to smile at them now... He knew now that he never had the essentials of success, only the superficial agility that is often mistaken for it. He was tow without the tinder, and he had burnt himself out at other people's fires. He had helped other people to make it win, but he himself he had never touched an enterprise that had not failed eventually. Or, if it survived his connection with it, it left him behind.” Evidently, his faulty determinations disillusion his parents. The resolve to inaugurate a self-governing life is a signal of the erroneous verdicts that he thoughtlessly embraced. The blatant cause-effect connotation between the Willie’s impressive past and demoralizing present is unequivocal. All his choices led to his catastrophe instead of making him stupendously prosperous.
Accounting Fraud - “The Bookkeeper's Wife”
Percy Bixby calculatedly tweaks the accounting archives; the falsification is tantamount to undesirable window-dressing: “The Remsen Paper Company was a very wealthy concern, with easy, old-fashioned working methods. They did a long-time credit business with safe customers, who never thought of paying up very close on their large indebtedness. From the payments on these large accounts Percy had taken a hundred dollars here and two hundred there until he had made up the thousand he needed. So long as he stayed by the books himself and attended to the mail-orders he could n't possibly be found out. He could move these little shortages about from account to account indefinitely. He could have all the time he needed to pay back the deficit, and more time than he needed.” The antiquated structure is a loophole that emboldens Percy Bixby to engineer accounting entrances surreptitiously. Although he forestalls to recompense the money, it is precarious and ignominious because repayment is not cast-iron which would disagreeably upset the company’s cash-flows. Perhaps, if the book-keeping division were administered through variation and isolation of bookkeeping accountabilities, Percy Bixby would not have stealthily fabricated the system at his resolve.
