I was especially fortunate in this respect in the situation in which I found myself one sunny morning in June, 1917. As the clock struck ten I strolled out of a big hotel, which I will call the Waldesruhe, in Lucerne, and wandered along the shady avenue beside the lake in the direction of the Schwanen-Platz. Luigi Battini, the manager of the Waldesruhe, was one of my closest personal friends, and I should have stayed at the Waldesruhe at any time I was in Lucerne quite apart from the particular business which had brought me there on this occasion. Luigi was one of those marvellously efficient human machines which appear almost to reach omniscience in everything connected, even remotely, with his profession. He would give his guests, off hand and without the slightest hesitation, minutely detailed directions for the most complicated of journeys without opening a time-table, and invariably his information was correct to the smallest particular. He knew at what stations every dining-car was put on every train within a radius of hundreds of miles, and he impressed upon you, in the far-off pre-war days, to remember that the train left Weis for Passau twenty minutes earlier this month than the hour mentioned in the time-table. His memory, especially for faces, was prodigious. Indeed, it was to this that I owed the beginnings of our friendship. Years before Luigi had been a waiter at the great buffet at Liverpool where passengers from the incoming American boats were in the habit of snatching a hasty meal before joining the train for London. I had arrived in England from New York cold and hungry, and, owing to some delay about my baggage, was unable to get to the restaurant until just before the London express was due to start. I had not realised how long I had been delayed, and had just taken my first mouthful of the soup which Luigi had brought me when the bell heralding the immediate departure of the train rang loudly. With a muttered ejaculation of annoyance I hastily threw down on the table the price of my abandoned meal and rushed out, jumped into the train, and a moment later was speeding Londonwards, still cold and hungry and in the very worst of tempers. Of course I promptly forgot the incident, and it was not until a year later that I was forcibly reminded of it. I had again arrived in Liverpool from New York and hurried to the same restaurant for a meal. By some queer chance I made for a table at which Luigi was still the waiter. I should not have known him, but he recollected me and our previous meeting. With a profound bow and a smiling flash of his exquisite teeth, Luigi said quizzically: "Good evening, monsieur. Has monsieur returned for his dinner?"