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.