No persuasion should ever induce him to revisit the city; on the contrary, he would always have his great arm-chair placed with its back to the windows which looked in that direction, until a thick grove of trees, planted by his own hand, grew up and formed a screen that effectually excluded it from the prospect.  He railed continually at the degenerate innovations and improvements introduced by the conquerors—­forbade a word of their detested language to be spoken in his family, a prohibition readily obeyed, since none of the household could speak anything but Dutch, and even ordered a fine avenue to be cut down in front of his house because it consisted of English cherry trees.

The same incessant vigilance, which blazed forth when he had a vast province under his care, now showed itself with equal vigor, though in narrower limits.  He patroled with unceasing watchfulness the boundaries of his little territory, repelled every encroachment with intrepid promptness:  punished every vagrant depredation upon his orchard or his farmyard with inflexible severity, and conducted every stray hog or cow in triumph to the pound.  But to the indigent neighbor, the friendless stranger, or the weary wanderer, his spacious doors were ever open, and his capacious fireplace, that emblem of his own warm and generous heart, had always a corner to receive and cherish them.  There was an exception to this, I must confess, in case the ill-starred applicant were an Englishman or a Yankee; to whom, though he might extend the hand of assistance, he could never be brought to yield the rites of hospitality.  Nay, if peradventure some straggling merchant of the East should stop at his door, with his cart-load of tinware or wooden bowls, the fiery Peter would issue forth like a giant from his castle, and make such a furious clattering among his pots and kettles, that the vender of “notions” was fain to betake himself to instant flight.

His suit of regimentals, worn threadbare by the brush, was carefully hung up in the state bedchamber, and regularly aired the first fair day of every month, and his cocked hat and trusty sword were suspended in grim repose over the parlor mantelpiece, forming supporters to a full-length portrait of the renowned admiral Van Tromp.  In his domestic empire he maintained strict discipline, and a well organized despotic government; but though his own will was the supreme law, yet the good of his subjects was his constant object.  He watched over not merely their immediate comforts, but their morals and their ultimate welfare; for he gave them abundance of excellent admonition; nor could any of them complain, that, when occasion required, he was by any means niggardly in bestowing wholesome correction.