Sailor’s Snug Harbor
Some idea of the lavishness of the architecture can be had by entering the comparatively new church, where marble and stained glass are harmoniously combined. The outer walls are pure white marble, the interior a soothing sanctuary of many colors. Underfoot is a rich brown marble from the shores of Lake Champlain. The wainscoting is of green rep and red Numidian marble. Eight immense pillars supporting the dome are in two shades of yellow Etrurian marble, delicate and unmarked. The altar is of the same shade, but exquisitely veined with a darker coloring. Both chancel and choir floors are richly mosaiced, the chancel steps being of the same delightful coloring as the piers. To the left of the chancel is the pulpit, an octagonal structure of Alps green, with bands and cornices of Etrurian and Sienna marble supported on eight columns of alternate Alps green and red Numidian, finished with a brass railing and Etrurian marble steps. The magnificent organ, with its two thousand three hundred or more pipes, is entirely worthy its charming setting. Over all falls the rich, warm-tinted light from numerous memorial windows, each a gem in design and coloring. On one of these the worshiper is admonished to “Be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of life among ye, but only of the ship.”
Admonish as one may, however, the majority of the old seamen are but little moved by such graven beauty; being hardened in simple, unorthodox ways. Not a few of them are given to swearing loudly, drinking frequently, snoring heavily on Sundays and otherwise disporting themselves in droll and unsanctified ways. To many of them this institution appears to be even a wasteful affair, intended more to irritate than to aid them. Not a few of them, as you may guess, resent routine, duty, and the very necessary officials, and each other. Although they possess comfortable and even superior living apartments, wholesome and abundant food, good clothing, abundant clean linen, a library of eight thousand volumes, newspapers, periodicals, time and opportunity for the pursuit of any fad or fancy, and no restrictions at which a reasonable man could demur, still they are not entirely happy. Life itself is passing, and that is the great sorrow.
And so occasionally there is to be found in that portion of the basement room from which the light is debarred, looking out from behind an iron door upon a company of blind mariners who occupy this section, working and telling stories, a mariner or two in jail. And if you venture to inquire, his mates will volunteer the information that he is neither ill nor demented but troubled with that complaint which is common to landsmen and sailors, “pure cussedness.” In some the symptom of this, I am told, will take the form of an unconquerable desire to go from room to room in the early morning and pull aged and irate mariners from their comfortable beds. In others it has broken out as a spell of silence, no word for any one, old or young, official or fellow resident. In another drunkenness is the refuge, a protracted spell, resulting in dismissal, with an occasional reinstatement. Another will fight with his roommate or his neighbor, sometimes drawing a chalk line between the two halves of a double room and defying the other to cross it at peril of his life. There have been many public quarrels and fights. Yet, all things considered, and age and temperament being taken into consideration, they do well enough. And not a few have sufficient acumen and industry to enter upon profitable employments. For there are many visitors, to whom useful or ornamental things can be sold. And a few of these salts will even buy from or trade with each other.
In consequence one meets with an odd type of merchant here and there. There is one old seaman, for instance, a relic of Federal service in “’61,” whose chamber is ornamented to the degree of confusion with things nautical, most of which are for sale. To enter upon him one must pass through a whole fleet of small craft, barks, brigs, schooners and sloops—the result of his jacknife leisure—arranged upon chests of drawers. Still another, at the time I visited the place, delighted in painting marine views on shells, and a third was fair at photography, having acquired his skill after arriving at the Harbor. He photographed and sold pictures of other inmates and some local scenes. Many can and do weave rugs and mats, others cane chairs or hammocks or fish-nets. Still others have a turn for executing small ornaments which they produce in great numbers and sell for their own profit. No one is compelled to work, and the result is that nearly all desire to. The perversity of human nature expresses itself there. In the long, light basement corridors, where it is warm and cozy, there are to be found hundreds of old sailors, all hard at work defying monotony with rapid and skilful finger movements.
All of these are not friendly, however, and many are vastly argumentative. No subject is too small nor any too large for their discussion in this sunlit forum. Especially are they inclined to belittle each other’s experiences when comparing them with their own important past, and so many a word is passed in wrath.
“I hain’t a-goin’ to hear sich rubbish,” remarked one seaman, who had taken offense at another’s detailed account of his terrible experience in some sea fight of the Civil War. “Sich things ain’t a-happenin’ to common seamen.”
“Yuh don’t need to, yuh know,” sarcastically replied the other. “This here’s a free country, I guess, ’cept for criminals,—and they hain’t all locked up, as they should be.”
“So I thought when I first seed yuh,” came the sneering reply, and then followed a hoarse chuckle which was only silenced by the stamping away of an irate salt with cheeks puffed out in rage.