Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories f
rom Nature,about the primeval forest.It was a picture of boa constrictor in the act of sw
allowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.In the book it said:"boa constrictors sw
allow 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 , ove
r the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a coloured pencil I succeeded in
making my first drawing.My Drawing Number One. It looked like this:I showed my masterpiec
e to the groown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.But they answered:
"Frighten? Why should anyone 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 wer
e not able to understand it ,I made another drawing: I drew the inside of 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
lay aside my drawings of boa constrictor, whether from the inside or the outside,and devot
e 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 dishearte
ned by the failure of mu Drawing Number One and Drawing Number Two . Grown-ups never under
stand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever exp
laining 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 disthguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in
the night, such knowledge is valuable.In the course of the this life I have had a great
many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequen
ce. 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 t
o me at all clear-sighted,I tried the experiment of showing him my DrawingNumber One, whic
h I have always kept. I would try to find out ,so , if this was a person of true understa
nding . But ,whoeverit 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.