When these matters were disposed of, he began to speak of what was nearest his heart.  He had a good deal of money; he wanted to leave it to some lasting use.  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. 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.  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.