Gaudens
evolved a veritable beau of a mariner, with knee-buckles positively
resplendent and an Admiral's wig. And, though it may not be a good
likeness, it is an agreeable enough ideal, and I think everyone
approves of it.
Robert Richard Randall is buried down there now and on his monument is
a simple and rather impressive inscription commemorating this charity
which--so it puts it--was "conceived in a spirit of enlarged
Benevolence."
Shortly afterwards he died, but his will, in spite of the inevitable
wrangling and litigation of disgusted relations, lived on, and the
Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors is an accomplished fact. Randall had
meant it to be built on his property there--a good "seeded-to-grass"
farm land,--and thought that the grain and vegetables for the sailor
inmates of this Snug Harbour on land could be grown on the premises.
But the trustees decided to build the institution on Staten Island.
The New York Washington Square property, however, is still called the
Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate, and through its tremendous increase in
value the actual asylum was benefited incalculably.
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