Day 301 morning 2021

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 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 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:

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.

tiresome：使人厌倦的，讨厌的

词根词缀： tire 疲倦 + -some 易于…的 , 产生…的

形容词后缀-some，表示充满...的，易于...的，产生...的，有...倾向的。具有...的，令...的

类似单词还有handsome，灵巧的，英俊的，帅气的，大方的

该词由 hand 加形容词后缀 -some 构成。由于它早巳丧失了原始词义，所以一般人对其理据就很难埋解。

在亨利八世时代(1509 - 1547) handsome 是 handy （近便的）或 easy to handle （易于操纵）的意思。 

16世纪20年代有位作家谈到德国人的长剑不如罗马短剑那样灵便，就用了 handsome 一词来表示“灵便的”。

最先将这个词用于今义的当数英国诗人斯宾塞和英国剧作家、诗人莎士比亚。他们在16世纪90年代用 handsome 来表示“（男子）漂亮的”。