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Mr, Key boarded a flag ship and traveled to Chesapeake Bay to obtain the release of Dr. Beanes. Gen. Ross consented to the release of Dr. Beanes, but since they were just about to make a combined sea and land attack upon Fort McHenry, it was stipulated that the American party should remain on the "Surprise" until the fort was reduced.

All during that eventful night, the 13th of September, the great guns of the fleet poured a blazing shower of shot and shell upon the fortress. Key, standing on the deck of the English ship in the midst of the excitement of the terrific bombardment, could see at intervals, by the glare of the rocket and flash of the cannon, the American flag waving victoriously over its gallant defenders. In the stirring enthusiasm of that supreme moment, and at the dawn's early light, when the Stars and Stripes rose above the smoke of conflict, and seemed to wave in triumph from the very battlements of heaven, Key wrote the song that should be as deathless as the flag itself.

The day after the bombardment, Key was taken ashore, and a clear copy of the song was made; and the day following it was read to a friend and kinsman of Key, Judge Nicholson, who, delighted with it, urged that it should be printed, and in a few hours "The Star Spangled Banner" was read everywhere in Baltimore and was received with the liveliest pleasure.

How to utilize the song was the next question. It was only a few days after the words were circulated throughout the city, that a gathering of army comrades took place at a one-story tavern standing next door to the Holiday Street theatre. Key was present, and read the song two or three times, and the pathetic eloquence of the lines electrified the soldiers. When someone demanded that it should be sung, one account says that Ferninand Durang, an actor, being acquainted with an old English air, "To Anacreon in Heaven," quickly made the

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER

O say can you see by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming;

Whose stripes and bright stars thro' the perilous fight

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming-

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O'say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in the dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream;

'Tis the sstar-spangled banner--Oh long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slavel

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation;

Blest with vict'ry and peace may the Heaven-rescued land

Praise the Power that hate made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our mottp: "In God is our trust,"

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Of all the songs inspired of patriotism and born in the fierce passions of war, "The Star Spangled Banner" probably has the firmest hold on the American people. It is the product of one of the most romantic and thrilling events in our national history.

With the renewal of war between England and France in 1803, came a return of trouble to the United States. Shortly after the war with France began, England claimed the right to search American vessels for deserters from the English navy. Thousands of Americans were seized and forced to fight for England; and to avenge these outraages, the United States declared war in 1812. It is another curious fact of history that the excellent frigates built during the exciting period which called forth "Hail Columbia," when the party in power was thought by the opposition to be too friendly toward Great Britain, were the nucleus of the gallant navy that by and by should win such triumphs over England in the stormy times that produced "The Star Spangled Banner."

In the latter part of August, 1814, Dr. William Beanes, an old resident of Upper Marlborough, Maryland, was captured by Gen. Ross of the British army, and held as a prisoner on the admiral's flagship, the "Surprise". The doctor was a personal friend of Francis Scott Key, then a young lawyer living in Baltimore.

proper adaptation, and mounting a chair, sang the song with such voice and feeling as to throw the hearers in the wildest state of excitement. In four days it found its way on the stage, where it was received with spontaneous and unbounded enthusiasm. The song seems to have been pitched to the keynote of a screaming shell, and everywhere, in places of amusement, in camp, and in the home, it went straight to the popular heart.

The old English tune, "To Anacreon in Heaven," with which "the Star spangled Banner" is inseparably associated, was composed in London, sometime between 1770 and 1775 by John Stafford Smith. He was a member of an aristocratic society called the "Anacreonites," and the regular fortnightly meetings were always opened with "To Anacreon in Heaven."

The flag of Fort McHenry, which inspired the immortal lines of "The Star spangled Banner," was made by Mrs. Mary Pickersgill, whose mother, Rebecca Young, made the first flag carried by the colonists in the war of the Revolution. Its original dimensions were forty feet by twenty-nine, but the shells from the English fleet, and the destructiveness of time, reduced its length to thirty-two feet.

Francis Scott Key was thirty-four years old when he wrote his famous song. He died on the 11th of January, 1843.

THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER WAS ADOPTED AS OUR NATIONAL ANTHEM ON MARCH 3, 1931.