I had not thought of the James Boys in many years. But when I got that letter, and realized that Frank James was still alive, the old stories came flooding back. As with Maeterlinck and Hinky Dink, the James Boys seemed to me to be fictitious figures; beings too wonderful to be true. The idea of meeting one of them and talking with him seemed hardly less improbable than the idea of meeting Barbarossa, Captain Kidd, Dick Turpin, or Robin Hood. I began to wish to visit Excelsior Springs.
Before I had a chance to answer the first letter others came. Mr. W. E. Davy, Chief Correspondent of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, wrote that, "Excelsior Springs is one of the most picturesque and interesting spots in that portion of the country." Ban B. Johnson, president of the American Baseball League, also wrote, declaring, "I believe Excelsior Springs to be the greatest watering place on the American continent." Then came letters from business men, Congressmen and Senators, until it began to seem to me that the entire world had dropped its work and taken up its pen to impress upon me the vital need of a visit to this little town. The letters came so thick that, from St. Louis, I telegraphed the Secretary of the Excelsior Springs Commercial Club to say that, if he would let up on me, I would agree to come. After that the letters stopped as though by magic. Until I reached Kansas City I heard no more about Excelsior Springs. There, however, a deputation called to remind me of my promise, and a few days later the same deputation returned and escorted my companion and me to the interurban car, and bought our tickets, and checked our trunks, and put us in our seats, and sat beside us watchfully, like detectives taking prisoners to jail. For though I had promised we would come, it must not be forgotten that they were from Missouri.
Excelsior Springs is a busy, pushing little town of about five thousand inhabitants, situated in Clay County, Missouri, about thirty miles from Kansas City. The whole place has been built up since 1880, on the strength of the mineral waters found there—and when you have tasted these waters you can understand it, for they are very strong indeed. But that is putting the thing bluntly. Listen, then, to the booklet issued by the Excelsior Springs Commercial Club:
Even as 'truth is stranger than fiction,' so the secrets of Nature are even more wonderful than the things wrought by the hands of man. Just why it pleased the Creator of the Universe to install one of His laboratories here and infuse into its waters curative powers which surpass the genius and skill of all the physicians in Christendom is a question which no one can answer. Like the stars, the flowers, and the ocean, it is merely one of the
great eternal verities with which we are surrounded. Whither and whence no man knows.
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.