Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian StreetStreet, Julian
General
Abroad at Home: American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
Street, Julian
United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
Having paid this fitting compliment to the Creator, the pamphleteer
proceeds to expatiate upon the joys of the place:
There are cool, shaded parks and woodlands, where you can sit under
the big, spreading trees which shut out the hot summer's sun--where
you can loll on blankets of thickly matted blue grass and read and
sleep to your heart's content--far from the madding crowd and the
world's fierce strife and turmoil.... Here the golf player will
find one of the finest golf links his heart would desire. The
fisherman will find limpid streams where the wary black bass lurks
behind moss-covered rocks.... Here you and your wife can vie at
tennis, bowling, horseback riding, and a dozen other wholesome
exercises, and when the shadows of the night have fallen there are
orchestras which dispense sweet music and innumerable picture shows
and other forms of entertainment which will while away the fleeting
moments until bedtime.
Though the writer of the above prose-poem chose to assume that the
imaginary being to whom he addresses himself is a married man, the
reader must not jump to the conclusion that Excelsior Springs is a
resort for married couples only, that the married are obliged to run in
pairs, or that those who have been joined in matrimony are, for any
reason, in especial need of healing waters. If unmarried persons are not
so welcome at the Springs as married couples, that is only because a
couple spends more money than an individual. The unmarried are cordially
received. And I may add, from personal observation, that the married
man or woman who arrives alone can usually arrange to "vie at tennis,
bowling, horseback riding, and a dozen other wholesome exercises" with
the husband or the wife of some one else. In short, Excelsior Springs is
like most other "resorts." But all this is by the way. The waters are
the main thing. The paved streets, the parks, the golf links, even Frank
James, sink into comparative insignificance compared with the natural
beverages of the place. The Commercial Club desires that this be clearly
understood, and seems, even, to resent the proximity of Frank James, as
a rival attraction to the waters, as though under an impression that no
human being could stomach both. Before I departed from the Springs some
members of the Commercial Club became so alarmed at the interest I was
showing in the former outlaw that they called upon me in a body and
exacted from me a solemn promise that I should on no account neglect to
write about the waters. I agreed, whereupon I was given full information
regarding the waters by a gentleman bearing the appropriate name of
Fish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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