Lucerne is a charming place.  It begins at the water’s edge, with a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry.  And also here and there a town clock with only one hand—­a hand which stretches across the dial and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it.  Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade trees.  The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing, to keep people from walking overboard.  All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children, and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountains peaks.  Little pleasure steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time; and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful rowboats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind.  The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it.

Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume, and carry alpenstocks.  Evidently, it is not considered safe to go about in Switzerland, even in town, without an alpenstock.  If the tourist forgets and comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner.  When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could.  You see, the alpenstock is his trophy; his name is burned upon it; and if he has climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it, too.  Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his achievements.  It is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it.  There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is to burn these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist.  And observe, a man is respected in Switzerland according to his alpenstock.  I found I could get no attention there, while I carried an unbranded one.  However, branding is not expected, so I soon remedied that.  The effect upon the next detachment of tourists was very marked.  I felt repaid for my trouble.