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The Son of Tarzan

by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Pages
about 333
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
6.1 h at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 3.4 h at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Mr. Harold Moore was a bilious-countenanced, studious young man. He took himself very seriously, and life, and his work, which latter was the tutoring of the young son of a British nobleman. He felt that his charge was not making the progress that his parents had a right to expect, and he was now conscientiously explaining this fact to the boy’s mother.

“It’s not that he isn’t bright,” he was saying; “if that were true I should have hopes of succeeding, for then I might bring to bear all my energies in overcoming his obtuseness; but the trouble is that he is exceptionally intelligent, and learns so quickly that I can find no fault in the matter of the preparation of his lessons. What concerns me, however, is the fact that he evidently takes no interest whatever in the subjects we are studying. He merely accomplishes each lesson as a task to be rid of as quickly as possible and I am sure that no lesson ever again enters his mind until the hours of study and recitation once more arrive. His sole interests seem to be feats of physical prowess and the reading of everything that he can get hold of relative to savage beasts and the lives and customs of uncivilized peoples; but particularly do stories of animals appeal to him. He will sit for hours together poring over the work of some African explorer, and upon two occasions I have found him setting up in bed at night reading Carl Hagenbeck’s book on men and beasts.”

“I—ah—essayed to take the book from him,” he replied, a slight flush mounting his sallow cheek; “but—ah—your son is quite muscular for one so young.”

“He would not,” confessed the tutor. “He was perfectly good natured about it; but he insisted upon pretending that he was a gorilla and that I was a chimpanzee attempting to steal food from him.

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