First of all it may be premised that most of the above indictments against the Turks have been made by people who have little or no personal knowledge of them, or by people who have been governed by passion or prejudice or have been actuated by selfish or political motives. And, secondly, it may be asserted as a fact that cannot be gainsaid that those who have lived among the Turks any length of time and have had an opportunity of becoming intimately acquainted with them find them to be thoroughly good, gentle, brave, and loyal to the core. And the longer one lives among them and the better one knows them the greater is one’s admiration for them. This is especially true of the real Turk--the Osmanli--particularly those of the peasant and bourgeois class in Anatolia. These are as honest and upright as they are temperate, pious, and religious. The piety and the devotion of the Moslems, their gravity and solemnity and reverential attitude during prayer, whether in the mosque or elsewhere, are of such character as to make a deep impression on even the least religious. “I have never entered a mosque,” writes Renan, “without a deep emotion, and--shall I say it?--without a certain regret at not being a Mussulman.”[115] This devout character of the Mohammedans which so profoundly impressed Renan, appealed with equal force to the poet who wrote: _Most honor to the men of prayer,_ _Whose mosque is in them everywhere!_ _Who amid revel’s wildest din,_ _In war’s severest discipline,_ _On rolling deck, in thronged bazaar,_ _In stranger land, however far, However different in their reach_ _Of thought, in manners, dress or speech,--_ _Will quietly their carpet spread,_ _To Mekkeh turn the humble head,_ _As if blind to all around,_ _And deaf to each resounding sound_ _In ritual language God adore,_ _In spirit to His presence soar,_ _And in the pauses of the prayer,_ _Rest, as if rapt in glory there._ Many, if not most of the erroneous notions which have been obtained respecting the Osmanlis have had their origin, at least in the minds of the great majority of people, in the ludicrous conceptions which have long been current regarding the harem life of these much maligned people. When a harem is referred to in Europe or America it is pictured as consisting of a swarthy, fierce, and sensual pasha, seated on a broad divan, garbed in richly embroidered robes, armed with a highly ornate scimitar, and contentedly smoking his narghile while his ever-youthful wives are entertaining him with music and dance and song.