Ingles

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 ofswallowing 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 throughthe 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. MyDrawing 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 frightenedby 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: Idrew 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, thistime, 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, atthe 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 understandanything 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 littleover 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....