November 18, 1874

We remember Clarence Day (November 18, 1874 to December 28, 1935) as the author of Life with Father (1936). The autobiographical vignettes composing Life with Father were first published as essays in the New York Evening Post, Harpers or The New Yorker. After being gathered into a book, the story went on to become a successful broadway play, and then movie. In other writings Day turned his analytical attention to the life of the intellectual. While there were apparently no cats in his father's life (that made it into literature) an earlier work, a collection of  brief essays, The Crow's Nest (1921) mentions felines. Here is a parable by Clarence Day which is brief enough to quote completely.

The Three Tigers

As to Tiger Number One, what he likes best is prowling and hunting. He snuffs at all the interesting and exciting smells there are on the breeze; that dark breeze that tells him the secrets the jungle has hid: every nerve in his body is alert, every hair in his whiskers; his eyes gleam; he’s ready for anything. He and Life are at grips.

Number Two is a higher-brewed tiger, in a nice cozy cave. He has spectacles; he sits in a rocking-chair reading a book. And the book describes all the exciting smells there are on the breeze, and tells him what happens in the jungle, where nerves are alert; where adventure, death, hunting and passion are found every night. He spends his life reading about them, in a nice cozy cave.

It’s a curious practice. You’d think if he were interested in jungle life he’d go out and live it. There it is, waiting for him, and that’s what he really is here for. But he makes a cave and shuts himself off from it—and then reads about it! 

But that’s not the worst. It is Tiger Number Three who’s the worst. He not only reads all the time, but he wants what he reads sweetened up. He objects to any sad or uncomfortable account of outdoors; he says it’s sad enough in his cave; he wants something uplifting. So authors obediently prepare uplifting accounts of the jungle, or they try to make the jungle look pretty, or funny, or something; and Number Three reads every such tale with great satisfaction. 

And since he’s indoors all the time and never sees the real jungle, he soon gets to think that these nice books he reads may be true; and if new books describe the jungle the way it is, he says they’re unhealthy. “There are aspects of life in the jungle,” he says, getting hot, “that no decent tiger should ever be aware of, or notice.”

The realist and the romantic tiger are agreed upon one point, however. They both look down on tigers that don’t read but merely go out and live.

Okay, here's another one, same theme, different trope:


Once upon a time some victims of the book habit got into heaven; and what do you think, they behaved there exactly as here. That was to be expected, however: habits get so ingrained. They never took the trouble to explore their new celestial surroundings; they sat in the harp store-room all eternity, and read about heaven.

They said they could really learn more about heaven, that way.

And in fact, so they could. They could get more information, and faster. But information’s pretty thin stuff, unless mixed with experience.


Here's an illustration from The Crow's Nest. 

Once upon a time Clarence Day's father was "Clarence Day, Sr. ... a governor on the New York Stock Exchange. His father, Benjamin, founded the New York Sun and his brother, Benjamin, Jr., invented the Ben Day process for color printing. " This last bit of confusing prose was copied. But we get the picture Clarence Day was from a rich family. And he is a good argument for rich people himself, being so talented and intelligent. Or so I read once.