And is this what 700 years of civilization has done for us?

It may have been a madness, a wild and fruitless expenditure of life, treasure, and happiness.  But I think it must have been a sight which gladdened the angels in heaven, to see such a mighty outpouring of generous sacrifice, without one selfish end in view.

People of all ranks, rich and poor alike, gave out of their abundance or their poverty; abandoned homes, happiness, everything, and flocked to the standards of the Cross.

The sufferings of this impetuous host may be imagined, but never described.  No railroads, no telegraphs, no skilled commissariat with careful provision for sustenance.

Thousands perished by the way.  Thousands more by the sword.  And although for a brief time the Cross floated over Jerusalem, it was only a fleeting vision.

The Saracens recovered what they had lost, and the Crescent waved triumphant above the Holy Land,—­and does so still.

At this time there was a wandering, warlike people living far beyond in Asia called Turks.  They had not settled homes, and had for centuries been straying into the lands by the Mediterranean, which were held by an Asiatic race remotely connected with them.

They had long ago embraced the religion of Mahomet, and by the time of the Crusades there was a goodly portion of them sprinkled throughout the Saracen dominions.  In fact, it is asserted that most of the outrages in Palestine which led to the Crusades were the work of Turkish Mahometans, rather than the Saracens.

One day, about the year 1250 (during the last days of the Crusades), one of these marauding bands of Turks under the leadership of a man named Etrogruhl came unexpectedly within sight of a battle which was being fought between two armies in Asia-Minor.

He did not know who were fighting, nor what they were fighting about.  But he led his 400 horsemen pell-mell into the thick of the fray, to help what seemed the losing side.

This decided the fate of the battle; and it turned out that they had been aiding the Sultan of Iconium, the great ruler of that land.

In gratitude for this service, the Sultan gave to Etrogruhl a large piece of territory, and he became the chief of a clan in this beautiful tract of land, which was all his own, bordering on the Byzantine Empire (as it was then called), and almost within sight of the Bosphorus and the city of Constantinople.

This was the beginning of the great Turkish Empire.

Othman, the son of this nameless adventurer, for whom the Ottoman Empire was named, was the first of a line of thirty-five sovereigns reaching down to our own time—­where his descendant sits in Constantinople to-day defying and confounding European statesmanship.

The first thing we hear of this young Othman is that he fell in love.  The beautiful “moon-faced” maiden was the daughter of a learned Doctor of Laws, who scorned the idea of giving his daughter to this obscure young person.