'...The Swiss are inspired hotel-keepers. Some centuries since, when a stranger strayed into one of their valleys, their simple forefathers would kill him and share out the little money he might have about him. Now they know better. They keep him alive and writing cheques. He has risen in economic value from the status of a hare or a wild pigeon to that of a milch cow - or, at the lowest, a good laying hen. And, to keep up his average yield, they diet not only body but soul; they melt heart-strings and purse-strings alike with cheap and cheery semi-gammon about Prisoners of Chillon, Tell's apple, the jousting of cows for the championship of the pasture, the prevalence of ghosts on the Matterhorn, and so on, till the lapse of coin from the wandering alien becomes almost spontaneous...'
from The Right Place by CE Montague (Chapter III, Part III)
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