once when i was six years old, i saw a magnificent picture in a book,calledtrue stories from nature, about the primeval forest. it was a picture of a boaconstrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. here is a copy of thedrawing.
in the book it said:" boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, withoutchewing it. after that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the sixmonths that they need for digestion."
i pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. and after somework with a colored pencil i succeeded in making my first drowing,my drawingnumber one. it looked like this:
i showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether thedrawing frightened them.
but they answered:"frighten? why should any one be frightened by ahat?"
my drawing was not a picture of a hat. it was a picture of a boaconstrictor digesting an elephant. but since the grown-ups were not able tounderstand it, i made another drawing: i drew the inside of the boaconstrictor,so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. they always need to havethings explained. my drawing number two looked like this:
the grown-ups response,this time, was to adviseme to lay aside my drawingof boa constrictors,whether from the inside or the outside and devote myselfinstead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar. that is why, at the ageof six, i gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. i hadbeen disheartened by the failure of my drawing number one and my drawing numbertwo. grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it si tiresome forchildren 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 ture thatgeography has been very useful to me. at a glance i can distinguish china fromarizona. if one gets lost in the night,such knowledge is valuable.
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