In my entire work, not including the humorous short stories and village-tales from the Ore Mountains, there is not a single character which was fully developed and perfected by me, not even Winnetou and Hadji Halef Omar, those two about whom I have written more than about any other characters. After all, I am not finished with my own development yet, I am still changing. Inside of me, everything is still moving ahead, and of the characters within me, all of my topics are moving along with me. I know my goal; but until I will have reached it, I am still travelling, and all of my thoughts are still travelling. Naturally, none of our poets and artists, and mainly none of our great classics, have postponed their work, until they have grown mentally mature enough, but I am to be regarded as an outsider in this respect as well, am even described by many as an outlaw or outcast, and therefore, I may not even by a long shot take those liberties which others take for granted. What is regarded as the most natural thing in the world with others, is in me either regarded as bad or ridiculous, and things which are accepted as an excuse, a reason for forgiveness, for others are being ignored in my case. One single time, I have intended to write something of artistic value, my "Babel and Bible". What was the consequence? It has been described as a "miserable fabrication", and so much mockery and sneering has been heaped up on it, as if it had been written by a harlequin or an ape. Such an experience makes a person stand back and await his time. And this time will come for sure. Literary buffoons can very well be swept off the scene, but spiritual movements cannot be suppressed, for they are invincible. I would not think of making accusations, since nothing would come out of it, anyhow. Nevertheless, I must not fail to give one example to illustrate the fact I touched upon here, one single example which says it all thus clearly that I can easily forgo all other evidence. This example concerns an organisation, which has been founded for the purpose of establishing libraries for the people and making books more readily available, and which has distributed, until now, several thousands of my volumes each year. Suddenly, they stopped this, and being asked about it, the central office of this organisation issued the following statement, which had been published by several newspapers: "On our part, we do refrain from the further distribution of May's writings and no longer offer these books through our catalogues, but we do not intent to express by this that the contents of May's traveller's tales would be objectionable, and we also to not ask the boards of our organisations to go through the trouble of removing these books from the libraries for that matter. Our current disapproving position is not directed against the _writings,_ but against the _personage_ of the author. _Thus,_you_can_continue_to_