Most of the people of Pennsylvania, and particularly the Quakers, were very glad to have Penn with them again. He was a man well able to govern, but not generally successful in choosing others to govern for him. There was one man, Colonel Quarry, who had been sowing dissension and distrust of Penn in the province, but Penn sent for him, and after a talk, Quarry admitted that he had been wrong and the two became friends. One of the things Penn soon learned, a thing that seems strange enough to us, was that there was a good deal of piracy going on in the neighborhood of his province, and that many of the pirates were actually living in comfort in Philadelphia! It did not take Penn long to get after these men, and he soon had them arrested and punished in a way that spoke well for his energy and zeal. Other crimes and wrongs he punished or corrected, and the Quakers soon found they were right in believing that their governor was as good an executive as he was a preacher. He was very busy that winter, holding meetings of his Council and passing new laws, preaching to Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, surveying a manor of ten thousand acres at Rockhill, in Bucks County, for his son John, and overseeing repairs to his country place at Pennsbury. Incidentally, it is interesting to recall that, liberal and freedom-loving as he was, it had not occurred to him to oppose the custom of holding negro slaves, for he himself had many slaves in his own employment. He urged the settlers to make their prisons not merely places of restraint but workhouses and reformatories, and as a result Pennsylvania prisons were far better managed than those in other colonies. He introduced the custom of having a night watchman go through the streets, calling out the hour, the state of the weather, and any news of interest. In many ways he improved conditions, showing that he had a real genius for governing and an intense desire to make his province an ideal place in which to live. Early in the spring of 1700 he moved to his mansion at Pennsbury, twenty miles up the river. It was built of bricks, most of which had been brought from England, and it stood about one hundred rods from the bank of the Delaware. Back of it were deep forests, penetrated by only a few roads and trails. It was said to have cost £5000 to build, a very large sum for a house in the wilderness, but it was the most imposing residence to be found anywhere between the Hudson and Potomac rivers, and had few equals in New York or Virginia. [Illustration: PENN'S DESK.]