Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/361

 longevity. Like them, too, she was careful to keep the business in the family; and when at last she relinquished her position (perhaps choked with her own dust), she bequeathed it to her daughter Katharine, a leathery maiden of uncounted summers. This chaste priestess of the broom and bucket also enjoyed a long reign and great popularity. Chamber-work at Harvard, it will be noted, has frequently carried with it the somewhat fantastic perquisite of being enshrined in garlands of poesy; and the virtues—for we dare not say the pulchritude—of this incumbent were more than once the inspiration of the undergraduate bard. She figures for example in the great comic poem, “The Rebelliad” (1819), being succinctly described in the dramatis personœ as “Goody, or Goody Muse, Miss Morse, the daughter of her mother.” The author, with a touch of fancy happier in design than in execution, thus invokes her at the beginning of his labors: Old Goody Muse! on thee I call
 * Pro more (as do poets all)

To string thy fiddle, wax thy bow,
 * And serape a ditty, jig, or so.

Now don’t wax wrathy, but excuse
 * My calling you old Goody Muse;

Because “Old Goody” is a name
 * Applied to every College dame.

Miss Morse, who survived till 1835, was probably the last distinctive type of the old régime. In her latter