"Turkey is the only country in Europe that does not believe in the Christian faith. Its most important city is on the shores of a strait through which a great deal of trade is carried from all parts of the world. These are some of the reasons different countries would like to get control of Turkey and its great city. They all look toward it with longing eyes.
"Besides these things, the Sultan himself is not a good ruler for his people. He has many wives and hundreds of slaves. Many of his people follow his bad example and buy slaves, both black and white."
But little Osman knows nothing of what is said about the Sultan and the people of his land. It has never entered his head that it is wrong to buy and sell human beings.
His mother is kind to her slaves, and does not make them work hard. Sometimes, too, she frees one of her slave women. They are happy, she thinks.
"But, dear little Osman," you would say, "it is the right of every one to be free. Perhaps when you grow up you will see this, and help to make things different in your country."
Let us go back now to the little boy and his father as they sat talking of the Sultan and his palace.
"He dresses very plainly," said the Turk. "But in the old days, the ruler's garments were very rich, and his fez fairly blazed with diamonds. If you had lived then, Osman, your eyes would have been dazzled when you looked at him."
"I wish I could have seen some of the things my grandmother has described," answered his son. "But I'm glad I wasn't living during the revolution of the janizaries. Everybody must have been scared then.
"Is it really true that Sultan Mahmoud's old nurse saved his life by hiding him away in an oven?"