Here are the Alps towering in all their glory, their immense contours sharp and clear. A few minutes more and our train stops at Lucerne. We were warned that the principal hotels at Lucerne were always full during the season, and that we had better order rooms beforehand by telegram, so we wired for an apartment at the “Hôtel Schweizerhof,” but it led to nothing, and when the omnibus pulled up at this hotel we learned, to our disgust, it was quite full. A superior-looking gentleman at the desk announced that he had no single room disengaged at present. We were told to come next morning and there might then be an apartment free in the meanwhile. Thanks to our telegram a room had been provided for us in a private house just opposite. We followed a waiter who showed us the way there, and mounted to our room in anything but a sweet temper. It proved to be small but bright and perfectly neat and had nice beds disappearing completely under huge eider-downs, with linen smelling of lavender. The furniture was simple, the walls hung all over with framed portrait groups of antiquated photography; amateur pictures of our landlady’s parents stared down at us over the mantlepiece; on one side of them hung a flaming heart made of red paper and on the other a small crooked mirror in which we could see only half of our faces reflected in it; I have seen nature insulted but never to such an extent. On the mantlepiece enclosed in a glass case stood a clock which didn’t mark the hour. Our landlady, a stout, comely-looking woman, proposed coffee and was altogether nice to us. The next day we went for the promised room at the “Schweizerhof,” but the manager, with his hands in both his pockets, announced curtly that there was no room free until evening. There remained nothing else to do but to walk away in quest of another apartment. After a pretty hot chase we succeeded in finding a comfortable room at the “Hôtel National,” on the second floor, with a good view on the lake, looking big as a sea, and the majestic Mount Pilatus, from where Pontius Pilatus is said to have thrown himself into the lake after the crucifixion. The legend goes that he fled from Jerusalem and wandered about the earth with a troubled conscience, and put an end to his misery on the heights of Mount Pilatus by drowning himself. From our windows we could also see the port where the steamers, black with people, were coming and going all the time, carrying away crowds of passengers in different directions of the beautiful lake. We are going to be here a week and make trips round about. I am prepared to be delighted with everybody and everything. Next morning we took our luncheon on our little railed balcony in cool comfort. The weather was clear and we had a very good view of the distant ranges of mountains and the snow-hooded Alpine peaks.