Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/359



Thus he flashes across the screen, yet leaving behind him a profile as imperishable as the Old Man of the Mountain. Consider for what budding Revolutionary patriots, for what incipient sages and heroes on Harvard’s scroll, his alcoholically tremulous hands shook up the feathers in the bolsters, filled the chambers with futile dust-clouds, and furtively decanted the jugs of Best Old Medford. His page in the considerable anthology of what may be termed vers de balai is indeed brief, but of a ragged pith and memorability worthy of its distinguished author. His widow followed the precedents by taking up his besom when he laid it down, and continued a senile pretence of hostility against spiders and roaches until transferred by common consent to the almshouse, where she died in 1794.

Meanwhile other reinforcements had been added to the Household Brigade. Sometimes their names and a