With industry and perseverance, energy and untiring zeal, I could conquer anything except the stupidity of human nature galled by envy. The more I worked to keep up my literary repute and the repute I had gained as traveller, the more furiously raged my opponents, and the more they endeavoured to discredit me, and to accuse me of all imaginable mistakes and misrepresentations. Once when I complained about this to Baron Eötvös, this noble and high-minded man rightly remarked, "The regions of your travels and studies are unknown in this land, and you cannot expect society to acknowledge its ignorance and incapacity to understand. It is far easier and more comfortable to condemn one whom it does not understand as a liar and a deceiver." Now this was exactly my position; all the same it grieved me to meet with so much opposition on every side. Not in any period of my life, when some public acknowledgment on the part of the Academy or of the newly-established Hungarian Government would have been such a help to one of my almost childish sensitiveness, had I ever received the slightest token of appreciation of my labours. Twelve years after my return from Central Asia I was elected ordinary member of the Academy, and then only after several quite insignificant men had preceded me, and I simply could not be passed over any longer. Others of higher birth, but without any literary pretensions, were made honorary members or even placed on the directing staff. As regards the State's want of appreciation of my work, although I may now look upon it as of no significance, it made me feel very sore at the time, especially during the Coronation festivities when Hungarian literati and artists were picked out and I was utterly ignored. At other times they were glad enough to distinguish me as the only Magyar who had brought Hungarian knowledge on to the world's stage, and had been instrumental in making the name of the Hungarian Academy known to the Western world. I could give many other proofs of this intentional neglect and ignoring of my claims, but why should I weary the reader any longer with revelations of wounded vanity? The conviction that I had become a stranger in my own land impressed itself more and more upon me; the false position in which I was placed must necessarily become more and more conspicuous. No wonder, then, that I grew indifferent towards the place which formerly had been the object of all my desires, and I now began to long for England, the foreign land where I was better understood and more appreciated, and where I had found more interest in my studies and more encouragement of my efforts.