3
To Leon Werth
I ask the indulgence of the children who may read this
book for dedicating it to a grown-up. I have a serious
reason: he is the best friend I have in the world. I have
another reason: this grown-up understands everything,
even books about children. I have a third reason: he lives
in France where he is hungry and cold. He needs cheering
up. If all these reasons are not enough, I will dedicate the
book to the child from whom this grown-up grew. All
grown-ups were once children-- although few of them
remember it. And so I correct my dedication:
To Leon Werth
when he was a little boy
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Chapter 1
we are introduced to the narrator, a pilot, and his
ideas about grown-ups
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 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:
5
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.
6
Chapter 2
the narrator crashes in the desert and makes the
acquaintance of the little prince
So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an
accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago. Something
was broken in my engine. And as I had with me neither a mechanic nor any
passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone. It was a
question of life or death for me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a
week.
The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any
human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in
the middle of the ocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise,
when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said:
"If you please-- draw me a sheep!"
"What!"
"Draw me a sheep!"
I jumped to my feet, completely thunderstruck. I blinked my eyes hard. I
looked carefully all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary small person,
who stood there examining me with great seriousness. Here you may see the
best potrait that, later, I was able to make of him. But my drawing is certainly
very much less charming than its model.
7
That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter's
career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except
boas from the outside and boas from the inside.
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my
head in astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand
miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be
straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or
hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost
in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation.
When at last I was able to speak, I said to him:
"But-- what are you doing here?"
And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of
great consequence: "If you please-- draw me a sheep..."
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it
might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in
danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen.
But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography,
history, arithmetic, and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too)
that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:
"That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep..."
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