"Paul's Case" — Third Time

The "case" in the short story by Willa Cather, which we read last year, is both a legal and a medical one: respectively of embezzlement and of "temperament". Christopher Benfey, reviewing a new biography of a gilded-age prototype of Bernie Madoff, suggests a third "case" … of implicit social protest, of paupers tricking their way into the gilded cage of robber barons. (Thanks to John for this notice.)