At the time of
Captain Randall's death, the New York estate brought in about $4,000 a
year. Today it is about $400,000,--and every cent goes to that real
Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors out near the blue waters of Staten
Island. So the "honest privateering" fortune has made at least one
impossible seeming dream come true.
As time went on this section--the Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate and the
Brevoort property--was destined to become New York's most fashionable
quarter. Its history is the history of American society, no less, and
one can have no difficulty in visualising an era in which a certain
naive ceremony combined in piquant fashion with the sturdy solidity of
the young and vigorous country. In the correspondence of Henry
Brevoort and Washington Irving and others one gets delightful little
pictures--vignettes, as it were--of social life of that day. Mr. Emmet
writes begging for some snuff "no matter how old. It may be stale and
flat but cannot be unprofitable!" Brevoort asks a friend to dine "On
Thursday next at half-past four o'clock.
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