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 act of 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 something 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 a 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 to me. 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 experiment of 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.
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