to the first inauguration. When Robert Richard came to die, in 1801,
he dictated, propped up in bed, his last will. After the bequests to
relatives and servants, he whispered to his lawyer: "My father was a
mariner, his fortune was made at sea. There is no snug harbour for
worn-out sailors. I would like to do something for them." Incidentally,
the lawyer who drew up the will was Alexander Hamilton.

[Illustration: AT THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF THE AVENUE AND TENTH STREET IS
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION, BUILT IN 1840, AND CONSECRATED
NOVEMBER 5, 1841. IT BELONGS TO A PART OF THE AVENUE, FROM THE SQUARE TO
TWELFTH STREET, WHICH HAS CHANGED LITTLE SINCE 1845]

So the Sailor's Snug Harbor Estate came into being, later to be
transferred to its present home on Staten Island. As I survey it from
the Richmond Terrace, which it faces, I like to recall its origin. That
origin does not in the least seem to interfere with the comfort of the
old salts in blue puffing away at their short pipes before the gate or
strolling across the broad lawn. Never mind the source of Captain Tom's
money. It is not for them to worry about the "Fox," or the "De Lancey,"
a brigantine with fourteen guns, which the "financier" took out in 1757,
and with which he made some sensational captures, or the "Saucy Sally."
Eventually the "De Lancey" was taken by the Dutch and the "Saucy Sally"
by the English. But before these misfortunes befell him Captain Tom had
amassed a fat property. Ostensibly he plied a coastwise trade mostly
between New York and New Orleans. But the same chronicler to whom we owe
the significant expression: "In those days a man was looked upon as
highly unfortunate if he had not a vessel which he could put to
profitable use," summed the matter up when he said: "The Captain went
wherever the Spanish flag covered the largest amount of gold."

At the northeast corner of Washington Square and Fifth Avenue is the
James Boorman house, now, I believe, the residence of Mr. Eugene
Delano. Helen W. Henderson, in "A Loiterer in New York," alludes to
certain letters about old New York written by Mr. Boorman's niece.
"She writes," says Miss Henderson, "of her sister having been sent to
boarding school at Miss Green's, No. 1 Fifth Avenue, and of how she
used to comfort herself, in her home-sickness for the family, at
Scarborough-on-the-Hudson, by looking out of the side windows of her
prison at her uncle, 'walking in his flower-garden in the r