Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 September 1891 — GEMS ON IOWA’S BOSOM. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GEMS ON IOWA’S BOSOM.

80ME OF THE BEAUTIFUL RESORTS FOR VISITORS. Delights ot Existence on the Shores of Clear Lake and Okobojl—Spirit Lake’s Attractions—The Water Toboggan-Ob-servations by a Somewhat Sarcastic Correspondent. t ; Hawkeye Watering-Places. There are a number of modest summer resorts in lowa despite its unpretentious character as a prairie State, 6avs a correspondent writing from Spirit Lake. They are “watering places” in the sense that most of them are in the vicinity of a body of water of more or less pretension. Two of these places—Clear Lake and Okoboji—have a meritorious claim to! attention. Neither one is conspicuous in the press—nor on the map, for that matter. The llrst is the Mecca of the Methodists, who delight in carrying out upon its shores and holding a vigorous midsummer 6eance with Satan; the last has been overshadowed by its less worthy neighbor, Spirit Lake, which has been the patient subject of a persistent “boom.” Up in Dickinson County, lowa, there is a chain of effective lakes. The bodies of water which mark either extremity of this chain are of respectable size, and have many claims to attractiveness. They are linked together by a series of ponds, weedy and muddy, which the fevered imagination of the aforesaid boomer has dubbed “lakes.” On Spirit Lake the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern Railroad has built a big hotel. In the summer time it is largely tenanted by the officers of the railroad, who, with their wives and friends, make a gay colony. Spirit Lake itself is like a big bowl. Its water is a beautiful blue. The fiat shores have a pastoral beauty, soothing to the nerves, 'perhaps, but with a tendency toward monotony. Even the fish caught in the lake 6eem inflicted by a sullen solidity and Btolidity. When served at the table d’hote they have a soggy insipidity which leads one to turn in despair to the unimpressionable steak. About the shore of the lake are clustered many effective cottages, those of President Ives, Charles A. Clark, the well-knbSvn lawyer, F. C. Harnel, and others being conspicuous. Few of these cottages are pretentious, but they are all in good taste, and are generally clever examples of summer architecture. Several wheezy and more or less rickety steamboats which sadly-suffer for want of paint ply between the Orleans and West Okoboji at the far end'of the lake chain. Navigation here is not perilous, but requires skill. There are a number of drawbridges of one kind and another to be passed, there are stony points to dodge and mud bank to scrape over. Occasionally the pilot yells from the wheelhouse, “Ladies and gents, please move forrard.” Then everybody goes up on the bow and the boat bobs along over the mud until it is time for everybody to go astern, when the procession is reversed and the stanch ehip slides over the hidden reef. This kind of' thing is exhilarating. One can imagine one’s self shipwrecked half a dozen times, cast away on a desert island like Warner Miller’s party to Nicaragua, discovering prints of patent-leather pumps in the sand like Robinson Crusoe, or swashed around among the weeds on the bottom like any other old salt who goes down to Davy Jones’ locker. But when one finally lands on the shore of West Okoboji it is a perpetual delight. The lake is the largest in the series. Its shores are bold and irregular, dented with charming bays, punctuated by rugged promontories and headlines, which stand out in miniature aggressiveness. The water is as tender as the sky in shade, the breezes blow upon it with a kindly playfulness. In places the lake is 250 feet deep and you can fish for pickerel with a hundred and fifty feet of line. Arnold’s Park is the hotel which affords shelter to the wayfarer here.

It is a somewhat tumble-down building set in a grand old grove of great, trees, one approaches the house he<js apt to hear a noise which lead's him to believe the famous Spirit Lake massacre is being re-enacted with some new features and modern improvements in the way of noise. The crash of dishes and the cracking of furniture mingle with the most blood-curdling yells. But this is nothing. It goes on all the time: It is merely the playfulnessof the brainy dining-room waiters who IftfcEe been imported from the at Mount Vernon. These model college youths seem to hold a mortg#« on the place and to be extinguishing it by running it to sfit 1 Aside from these conspicuous*'.members of the hotel staff there is only one other visible

nuisance. That is the survivor of the Spirit Lake massacre. To know that there had been a massacre might give the place some shadow of romance, but to be inflicted with a survivor of it is too much, particularly when the survivor has written a prosy book in gorgeous covers and bad English. Aside from this life flows smoothly at West Okoboji. Here and there upon its shores the most sightly spots have been preempted! by the cottagers, who in little communities have ensconced themselves among the trees and by the pebbly beaches. They stick together in groups which take the names of the localities whence the tenants come. Thus one is Fort Dodge Point, another Des Moines Beach, and off there, on the far arm of the lake is Omaha. The residents of this latter point have put up a water toboggan! slide—a long reverse curve of wood, supplied with rollers on the inside surface. It starts from the top of' a big oak and ends in the lake. The bather drags the toboggan up a flight of stairs behind, launches it, goes down like a rocket, and slides over the water until the momentum is lost and the slender affair sinks beneath the bather’s weight. It is an exciting sport. To drop over the curve in the slide is like a straightaway fall through midair. It takes the breath and is apt to take one’s nerve. But the subsequent slide over the water with the white spray flying before is delicious. The bathing is the popular daily amusement of course. The costumes worn in the water are not abbreviated on the lines so conspicuous at the sea shore. They are modest in cut and in material and finish, and it requires a high order of female beauty or manly dignity to survive one. It is a sight for the gods to weep over to see a passe Orleans belle arrayed in one. You have heard of the Colos-

scum of of the Acropolis? Well, as a rule they are not in itl This year the lake season has been very short and unprofitable. It has been too cold. The people at A-rnold’s Park sat around the stoves until the middle of July and in vain attempted t<j let imagination play pranks about the delights of midsummer outings. But it wouldn't work. So the hotel: men are sad, the horny-handed boatmen smile not, the bathing-house man wearily tosses you a suit with a rip in the back, and the weatherbeaten steamboats have a wheezy note of complaint in their asthmatic whistles.

WATER TOBOGGAN IN WEST OKOBOJL.