A PRINCESS OF MARS
by
Edgar Rice Burroughs
To My Son Jack
FOREWORD
To the Reader of this Work:
In Captain Carter's to you in book form, I that a relative to this will be of interest.
My of Captain Carter is of the months he at my father's home in Virginia, just to the opening of the war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well the tall, dark, smooth-faced, man I called Uncle Jack.
He always to be laughing; and he entered into the of the children with the same good he toward those in which the men and of his own age indulged; or he would for an hour at a time my old with of his strange, wild life in all parts of the world. We all loved him, and our the ground he trod.
He was a of manhood, a good two over six feet, of and narrow of hip, with the of the man. His were regular and clear cut, his black and closely cropped, while his were of a gray, a and character, with fire and initiative. His manners were perfect, and his was that of a southern of the type.
His horsemanship, after hounds, was a and in that country of horsemen. I have often my father him against his wild recklessness, but he would only laugh, and say that the that killed him would be from the of a yet unfoaled.
When the out he left us, did I see him again for some fifteen or sixteen years. When he returned it was without warning, and I was much to note that he had not a moment, had he in any other way. He was, when others were with him, the same genial, happy we had of old, but when he himself alone I have him for hours off into space, his set in a look of and misery; and at night he would thus looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read his years afterward.
He told us that he had been and in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that he had been very successful was by the unlimited amount of money with which he was supplied. As to the of his life these years he was very reticent, in he would not talk of them at all.
He with us for about a year and then to New York, where he purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited him once a year on the occasions of my to the New York market—my father and I owning and a of stores Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a small but cottage, on a the river, and one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I he was much in writing, I now, upon this manuscript.
He told me at this time that if anything should to him he me to take of his estate, and he gave me a key to a in the safe which in his study, telling me I would his will there and some personal which he had me myself to out with fidelity.
After I had retired for the night I have him from my window in the moonlight on the of the the Hudson with his arms out to the as though in appeal. I at the time that he was praying, although I that he was in the of the term a religious man.
Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the of March, 1886, I think, I a from him me to come to him at once. I had always been his among the of Carters and so I to with his demand.
I at the little station, about a mile from his grounds, on the of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the man to drive me out to Captain Carter's he that if I was a friend of the Captain's he had some very news for me; the Captain had been after that very by the to an property.
For some this news did not me, but I out to his place as as possible, so that I take of the and of his affairs.
I the who had him, together with the local police and townspeople, assembled in his little study. The related the with the of the body, which he said had been still warm when he came upon it. It lay, he said, full length in the with the arms above the toward the of the bluff, and when he me the spot it upon me that it was the one where I had him on those other nights, with his arms in to the skies.
There were no marks of on the body, and with the of a local physician the coroner's a of death from failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and the of the in which he had told me I would my instructions. They were in part indeed, but I have them to each last detail as as I was able.
He that I remove his to Virginia without embalming, and that he be in an open a which he had had and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated. The upon me that I must personally see that this was out just as he directed, in if necessary.
His property was left in such a way that I was to the entire for twenty-five years, when the was to mine. His related to this which I was to sealed and unread, just as I it, for eleven years; was I to its until twenty-one years after his death.
A about the tomb, where his still lies, is that the door is with a single, gold-plated lock which can be opened only from the inside.
Yours very sincerely,
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
