Dick Hamilton's Cadet Days Or, The Handicap of a Millionaire's Son

Garis, Howard Roger, 1873-1962Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.9
Word count
322K words
Chapters
33

Tags

English Originals Children's Literature Naval AcademyCampus LifeFriendship and RivalryCompetitionInspirationGrowing UpResourceful BraverySelf-GrowthAmerican LiteratureYouth Reading

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Dick Hamilton's Cadet Days; Or, The Handicap of a Millionaire's Son by GarisAuthor: Garis, Howard Roger, 1873-1962,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Oct 14, 2010

Editor's review

This is a military-school novel for young readers by Garis, belonging to the category of juvenile literature. The story follows a wealthy boy's experiences after entering a military academy; the word “handicap” in the title signals the book's central tension: wealth is not necessarily an advantage before collective discipline and peer relations, and may instead invite scrutiny and misunderstanding. Its appeal lies in weaving campus life, military-school training, and a boy's growth in self-respect, friendship, and responsibility into one narrative, with brisk plotting; it works well as an entry point for young readers into early English juvenile fiction. While reading, it is worth noting how the protagonist shifts from relying on family circumstances to relying on his own performance—this thread is more worth discussing than the specific events. As a public-domain ebook, it is better suited to light reading for literature and English study than to serious research on military schools.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Read the opening chapters first to clarify the characters and the military-school rules, then follow the protagonist's process of adjustment.
  2. When using it for extensive reading in English, do not look up every word; grasp the chapter plot first, then revisit unfamiliar words.
  3. After reading, discuss with children what family circumstances mean within a group, turning the story into a topic about growing up.
  4. Excerpt passages describing training and peer interaction to use as material for English writing or oral retelling.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33

FAQ

What age of child is this book suitable for? Judging by subject matter and language difficulty, it is best suited to readers from upper primary to lower secondary school. Younger children can follow the main story if they read a Chinese translation or read with an adult; the original English edition is better for teenagers with some vocabulary, and parents can choose the edition and approach based on the child's actual reading ability.
What exactly is the “handicap” in the story? The title points to “the handicap of a millionaire's son”—the situation and psychological pressure the protagonist faces in the military school because of his family's wealth. The book centers on how he deals with peers' views, disciplinary demands, and his own expectations; the focus is not on wealth itself but on how a boy sheds the aura of his family and earns recognition through his own performance.
What should I watch out for when reading this as a public-domain ebook? Public-domain ebooks are easy to obtain free of charge, but typesetting and proofreading quality vary, and typos or formatting problems may occur. Choose a reliable source, focus on understanding the plot while reading, and skip obvious typesetting errors on your own; do not let individual flaws spoil the overall reading experience.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Garis, Howard Roger, 1873-1962 Author

Howard Roger Garis (1873–1962) was an American author of children's literature. Little is publicly documented about his life, and reliable biographical information remains limited. The library holds 39 of his works, mainly animal stories and adventure novels for young readers. He is best known for the Uncle Wiggily series, including Uncle Wiggily's Adventures, Uncle Wiggily in the Woods, Uncle Wiggily's Travels, Uncle Wiggily's Auto Sled, and Uncle Wiggily's Squirt Gun, which feature an anthropomorphic rabbit and are marked by light, humorous plots suited to younger children. Other works, such as Dick Hamilton's Touring Car, tell lively stories of a young millionaire's motoring adventures. His sizable output gave him a modest place in early twentieth-century American children's publishing.