The Philistine : $b a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 5, October 1896)Various
General
The Philistine : $b a periodical of protest (Vol. III, No. 5, October 1896)
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; American periodicals; Society of the Philistines (East Aurora, N.Y.) -- Periodicals
So here’s to good St. Cad,
For he isn’t half so bad
In spite of looks.
If I must tempted be
Pray let Cadmus come to me
With musty books.
John H. Finley.
CLANGINGHARP PAYS UP.
When Championoar and Padmarx tiptoed out of the elevator the three women
were sitting on a bench in the hall waiting for Clangingharp. Padmarx
sketched a mental cartoon of them, and with a nod at the bench and a
funereal mandamus to silence, the lawyer led the way into the entry.
Clangingharp let them in. He went on snapping studs into his shirt,
and the callers sat down. Championoar put his fingers into his vacant
waist-coat pocket and said it must be half-past eleven. Clangingharp said
he couldn’t help that; it was every man’s privilege to get up when he
pleased. Besides, how could he go to breakfast with Them out there? He
drew on lavender trousers suspended with embroidered galluses.
“Now see here,” began Championoar, “I don’t want to make trouble for you,
Strings, but this is my first case, and I’m going to recover or know the
reason why. Friendship’s all right, and I haven’t forgotten the time you
pulled me out of the river by the neck and nearly broke the neck. But a
lawyer has to win cases.”
“Old man,” said Clangingharp, adjusting his necktie, “I’m proud to be
your first defendant, and I wish you luck. I think your chances are
mighty bad, but I wish you luck.”
Championoar said if every cent was not paid up to the first of the month
before the next morning, Padmarx would print the story in _The Evening
Coat_, with pictures of the women.
“You bet your upright piano I will,” said Padmarx, but Clangingharp said
it wasn’t a piano, it was a folding bed.
Championoar said Clangingharp had no idea what he had been through trying
to keep each of those women from knowing the others were attempting to
collect alimony.
“Look here, Padmarx,” said Clangingharp, “buckle up this waist-coat, will
you? Well, how in thunder did they all happen to go to you?”
“They didn’t,” said Championoar. “I went to them. The Knittenpin woman
claims you never have paid her a dollar”——
“That’s just what I have paid her,” said the defendant, pulling on a
patent leather boot.
“Which makes three hundred. The actress wants two hundred, and Volumnia”——
“Ah, sweet Volumnia!”
“Volumnia says she hasn’t had a cent from you in two months—that’s one
hundred and fifty. Now what you going to do about it?”
Clangingharp buttoned up his Prince Albert coat and pinned a white
rose-bud into his button-hole. Then he said he would have much money at
noon, and would pay up before five. “Hold on, though. I never was married
to the Knittenpin woman. She’s got her divorce like the rest—I swear I
was never married to her. I’ll pay the others, but I’m damned if I pay
the Knittenpin woman.”
“Nonsense,” said Championoar, “I was best man.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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