Now that I was started, really out of Italy, I was ready for any change, the more marked the better; and here was one. Switzerland is about as much like Italy as a rock is like a bouquet of flowers--a sharp-edged rock and a rich colorful, odorous bouquet. And yet, in spite of all its chill, bare bleakness, its high ridges and small shut-in valleys, it has beauty, cold but real. As the train sped on toward Lucerne I kept my face glued to the window-pane on one side or the other, standing most of the time in the corridor, and was rewarded constantly by a magnificent panorama. Such bleak, sharp crags as stood always above us, such cold, white fields of snow! Sometimes the latter stretched down toward us in long deep cañons or ravines until they disappeared as thin white streaks at the bottom. I saw no birds of any kind flying; no gardens nor patches of flowers anywhere, only brown or gray or white châlets with heavy overhanging eaves and an occasional stocky, pale-skinned citizen in a short jacket, knee trousers, small round hat and flamboyant waistcoat. I wondered whether I was really seeing the national costume. I was. I saw more of it at Lucerne, that most hotelly of cities, and in the mountains and valleys of the territory beyond it--toward Basle. Somebody once said of God that he might love all the creatures he had made but he certainly couldn’t admire them. I will reverse that for Switzerland. I might always admire its wonders but I could never love them. And yet after hours and hours of just this twisting and turning up slope and down valley, when I reached Lucerne I thought it was utterly beautiful. Long before we reached there the lake appeared and we followed its shores, whirling in and out of tunnels and along splendid slopes. Arrived at Lucerne, I came out into the piazza which spreads before the station to the very edge of the lake. I was instantly glad that I had included Lucerne in my itinerary. It was evening and the lamps in the village (it is not a large city) were already sparkling and the water of the lake not only reflected the glow of the lamps along its shores but the pale pinks and mauves over the tops of the peaks in the west. There was snow on the upper stretches of the mountains but down here in this narrow valley filled with quaint houses, hotels, churches and modern apartments, all was balmy and pleasant,--not at all cold. My belongings were bundled into the attendant ’bus and I was rattled off to one of the best hotels I saw abroad--the National--of the Ritz-Carlton system; very quiet, very ornate, and with all those conveniences and comforts which the American has learned to expect, plus a European standard of service and politeness of which we can as yet know nothing in America.