What a pity his manners are not less boorish!" But Peter was not thinking of the impression he made.

With an insatiable inquisitiveness and an omnivorous curiosity, he was looking for the secret of power in nations.

Nothing escaped him--cutlery, rope-making, paper manufacture, whaling industry, surgery, microscopy; he was engaging artists, officers, engineers, surgeons, buying models of everything he saw--or standing lost in admiration of a traveling dentist plying his craft in the market, whom he took home to his lodgings, learned the use of the instruments himself, then practiced his new art upon his followers.
At The Hague he endured the splendid public reception, then hurried off his gold-trimmed coat, his wig and hat and white feathers, and was amid grime and dust examining grist-mills, and ferry-boats, and irrigating machines.

To a lady he saw on the street at Amsterdam he shouted "Stop!" then dragged out her enameled watch, examined it, and put it back without a word.

A nobleman's wig in similar unceremonious fashion he snatched from his head, turned it inside out, and, not being pleased with its make, threw it on the floor.
Perhaps Holland heard without regret that her guest was going to England, where he was told the instruction was based upon the principles of ship-building and he might learn more in a few weeks than by a year's study elsewhere.