Quote of the Day (Clarence Day, on His Mother Buying a Clock at Auction)

“Mother knew in her heart that she had no business going to auctions. She was too suggestible, and if an hypnotic auctioneer once got her eye, she was lost. Besides, an auction aroused all her worst instincts —her combativeness, her recklessness, and her avaricious love of a bargain. And the worst of it was that this time it wasn’t a bargain at all. At least she didn’t think it was now. The awful old thing was about eight feet tall, and it wasn’t the one she had wanted. It wasn’t half as nice as the clock that old Miss Van Derwent had bought. And inside the hood over the dial, she said, there was a little ship which at first she hadn’t noticed, a horrid ship that rocked up and down every time the clock ticked. It made her ill just to look at it. And she didn’t have the money, and the man said he’d have to send it this evening, and what would Father say?”—American humorist and cartoonist Clarence Day (1874-1935), “Father and His Hard-Rocking Ship,” in Life With Father (1935)

(The image accompanying this post is from the 1947 film Life With Father, based on Day’s book and the long-running Broadway comedy adapted from it. William Powell play Clarence Day Sr. and Irene Dunne his wife “Vinnie.”)