Though descended from a family which suffered much injury from the losel Yankees of those times, my great-grandfather having had a yoke of oxen and his best pacer stolen, and having received a pair of black eyes and a bloody nose in one of these border wars, and my grandfather, when a very little boy tending pigs, having been kidnapped and severely flogged by a long-sided Connecticut schoolmaster,—yet I should have passed over all these wrongs with forgiveness and oblivion,—I could even have suffered them to have broken Everet Ducking’s head,—to have kicked the doughty Jacobus Van Curlet and his ragged regiment out of doors,—to have carried every hog into captivity, and depopulated every hen-roost on the face of the earth with perfect impunity,—but this wanton attack upon one of the most gallant and irreproachable heroes of modern times is too much even for me to digest, and has overset, with a single puff, the patience of the historian, and the forbearance of the Dutchman. Oh, reader, it was false! I swear to thee, it was false!—if thou hast any respect to my word,—if the undeviating character for veracity, which I have endeavored to maintain throughout this work, has its due weight upon thee, thou wilt not give thy faith to this tale of slander; for I pledge my honor and my immortal fame to thee, that the gallant Peter Stuyvesant was not only innocent of this foul conspiracy, but would have suffered his right arm or even his wooden leg to consume with slow and everlasting flames, rather than attempt to destroy his enemies in any other way than open, generous warfare;—beshrew those caitiff scouts, that conspired to sully his honest name by such an imputation! Peter Stuyvesant, though haply he may never have heard of a knight-errant, had as true a heart of chivalry as ever beat at the round table of King Arthur. In the honest bosom of this heroic Dutchman dwelt the seven noble virtues of knighthood, flourishing among his hardy qualities like wild flowers among rocks. He was, in truth, a hero of chivalry struck off by nature at a single heat, and though little care may have been taken to refine her workmanship, he stood forth a miracle of her skill. In all his dealings he was headstrong perhaps, but open and aboveboard; if there was anything in the whole world he most loathed and despised, it was cunning and secret wile; “straight forward” was his motto, and he would at any time rather run his hard head against a stone wall than attempt to get round it.