Hamilton asked how he had made his money, and
Randall explained he had inherited it from his father.
"And how did he get it?" asked the great lawyer.
"By honest privateering!" declared Captain Tom's son proudly.
And then, or so the story goes, he went on to whisper:
"My father's fortune all came from the sea. He was a seaman, and a
good one. He had money, so he never suffered when he was worn out, but
all are not like that. I want to make a place for the others. I want
it to be a _snug harbour for tired sailors_."
So the will, July 10, 1801, reads that Robert Richard Randall's
property is left to found: "An Asylum or Marine Hospital, to be called
'The Sailors' Snug Harbour,' for the purpose of maintaining aged,
decrepit, worn-out sailors."
One of the witnesses, by the bye, was Henry Brevoort.
The present bust of Randall which stands in the Asylum is, of course,
quite apocryphal as to likeness. No one knows what he looked like, but
out of such odds and ends of information as the knee-buckles and so
on, mentioned in the will, the artistic imagination of St.
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