01-Chapter 1-iv

Chapter 1

Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature , about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the actof swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing .

In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion .”

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle . And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like this: 

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. 

But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?” 

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this: 

The grown-ups’ response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography , history, arithmetic and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. 

So then I chose another profession , and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful tome. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona . If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable . 

In the course of this life, I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence . I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately , close at hand . And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them. 

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted , I tried the experimentof showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding . But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: 

“That is a hat.” 

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge , and golf , and politics, and neckties . And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.