Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| GRIM old Stuyvesant had lost a leg in the wars. He wore in its place a wooden one, laced with silver bands,—so that some traditions speak of it as silver. No other figure of Dutch, nor indeed of colonial days, is so well remembered; none other has left so deep an impress on Manhattan history and tradition as this whimsical and obstinate, but brave and gallant old fellow, the kindly tyrant of the little colony. To this day he stands in a certain sense as the typical father of the city. |
| There are not a few old New Yorkers who half-humorously pretend still to believe the story which their forefathers handed down from generation to generation,—the story that the ghost of Peter Stuyvesant, the queer, kindly, self-willed old dictator, still haunts the city he bullied and loved and sought to guard, and at night stumps to and fro, with a shadowy wooden leg, through the aisles of St. Mark’s Church, near the spot where his bones lie buried. |
| Stuyvesant was a man of strong character, whose personality impressed all with whom he |