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"At 9:30 in the morning the train bringing health-seekers and tourists arrives at Hot Springs, a beautiful little city nestled in the southernmost foot-hills of the world-reputed Black Hills of South Dakota. The choice of a hotel is soon made, and when located, the new-comers observe the other guests and acquaint themselves with the attractions of the resort.
I am told that all snakes remain in a torpid state during the winter, and no danger might be expected from them, and as the floors of the hotel would be kept tight no vermin could crawl through. There can be no doubt that the Lake of the Dismal Swamp must become the great centre of health-seekers, and that at an early day.
I notice with astonishment that at our fashionable watering-places nobody walks; that, of all those vast crowds of health-seekers and lovers of country air, you can never catch one in the fields or woods, or guilty of trudging along the country road with dust on his shoes and sun-tan on his hands and face.
Discreet inquiry of the hotel clerk as to the population of the town, resident and floating, its general healthfulness, the number of health-seekers, their success, and the number and relative skill of the physicians it supported finally elicited for Ellison all the information his present interest desired concerning Dr. Millner and his family. He also learned much about the history of Tobin.
So the town had dropped the plebeian "Gulch" from its name and as "Tobin" counted with ever increasing pride the hundreds of cars that carried its fruit from ocean to ocean and the growing numbers of its health-seekers and summer visitors. "It looks good to me," was Ellison's inward comment as he walked up the street again. "I think I 'll look into this fruit business.
Boats run almost all the year around up this river as far as Alabama points, and not only is a large and lucrative freight business transacted, but pleasure and health-seekers are also carried in large numbers. Everything was not prosaic in river life in the old days.
As a result, a great watering place has sprung up on the site of what was once a mysterious resting place of the Indians, and a retreat which it was dangerous to enter. About 2,000 people live here, and during the season there are often 3,000 or 4,000 health-seekers in addition. There is a grand avenue through the village eighty feet wide and well kept.
The place is a pure creation of the health-seekers whose gay villas are thrown fancifully about among its sombre fir-woods, though the "Old Town," as it is called nowadays, remains clinging to its original height, street above street leading up to a big bare church of the Renascence period, to fragments of mediæval walls and a great tower which crowns the summit of the hill.
In order to entice health-seekers, all kinds of gratifications await them on the summit, restaurant, dairy, reading room, tennis court, and croquet ground, to say nothing of a panorama almost unrivalled in eastern France. We have, indeed, climbed the Eiffel Tower, in other words, are on a level with that final stage from which floats the Tricolour.
However, of all the drugs which create a craving in the system for a repetition of the dose, coffee makes the lightest fetters. It is surprising how often health-seekers inform the adviser that they "can not get along without coffee."
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