least we would have some kind of candles for the three angles. Who owns this garbage?" "Nobody really. I have to get it to the janitor. Whether he throws it out or not, is his business." "So it wouldn't be stealing, if we'd take a bit of it home with us?" "Stealing. Ridiculous! Nobody would think of it! All of this dirt isn't worth three pfennig. I'll wrap some of it in a piece of paper for you. This we'll use to make three little Christmas candles." Said, done! We were not alone. Another seminarist was with us; someone from the first grade, one grade above mine. I am reluctant to give his name. His father was a gendarme. This upstanding fellow student observed everything. He did not warn me at all, but was quite friendly, left, and - - - reported on me. The principal came in person, to investigate the "theft". I admitted very calmly what I had done and returned the "loot" I had taken. I truly thought nothing bad of it. But he called me an "infernal character" and assembled the faculty, to decide about me and my punishment. Just half an hour later, I was informed of it. I was dismissed from the seminary, I was free to go to wherever I wished. I left right away with my sister - - - for the holy Christmas season - - - without tallow for the Christmas angles - - - these were very gloomy, dark Christmas holidays. I guess, I did already say that especially Christmas had often been for me a time of sadness, not joy. In those days of Christmas, holy flames of my soul were quenched out, lights which I held dear. I learnt to differentiate between Christianity and those who call themselves Christians. I had come to know Christians who had acted less Christianly against me than Jews, Turks, and heathens would have done. Luckily, the department of culture and public education, I had turned to, proved to be more reasonable and more humane than the seminary's management. Without any objections, I obtained the permission to continue my interrupted studies at the seminary of Plauen. There, I got into the same grade, that is into the second one, and after having finished the first grade, I passed the examination to become a teacher, after which I obtained my first job in Glauchau, but soon got to Altchemnitz into a school, belonging to a factory, where the all of the students were rather grown up factory workers. Here, my confessions have to start. I give them without hesitation, according to the truth, as if I was not dealing with myself, but another person, a stranger.