have
caught his death of cold.

Having thus wandered afield, let me now resume my nocturnal walk.

Proceeding down Howard Street to Franklin, I judged by the signs I saw
about me--the conglomerate assortment of theaters, hotels, rathskellers,
bars, and brilliantly lighted drug stores--that here was the center of
the city's nighttime life.

Not far from this corner is the Academy, a very spacious and somewhat
ancient theater, and although the hour was late, into the Academy I went
with a ticket for standing room.

Arriving during an intermission, I had a good view of the auditorium. It
is reminiscent, in its interior "decoration," of the recently torn-down
Wallack's Theater in New York. The balcony is supported, after the old
fashion, by posts, and there are boxes the tops of which are draped with
tasseled curtains. It is the kind of theater which suggests traditions,
dust, and the possibility of fire and panic.

After looking about me for a time, I drew from my pocket a pamphlet
which I had picked up in the hotel, and began to gather information
about the "Monumental City," as Baltimore sometimes calls
itself--thereby misusing the word, since "monumental" means, in one
sense, "enduring," and in another "pertaining to or serving as a
monument": neither of which ideas it is intended, in this instance, to
convey. What Baltimore intends to indicate is, not that it pertains to
monuments, but that monuments pertain to it: that it is a city in which
many monuments have been erected--as is indeed the pleasing fact. My
pamphlet informed me that the first monument to Columbus and the first
to George Washington were here put up, and that among the city's other
monuments was one to Francis Scott Key. I had quite forgotten that it
was at Baltimore that Key wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
and, as others may have done the same, it may be well here to recall the
details.

In 1814, after the British had burned a number of Government buildings
in Washington, including "the President's palace" (as one of their
officers expressed it), they moved on Baltimore, making an attack by
land at North Point and a naval attack at Fort McHenry on Whetstone
Point in the estuary of the Patapsco River--here practically an arm of
Chesapeake Bay. Both attacks were repulsed. Having gone on the United
States cartel ship _Minden_ (used by the government in negotiating
exchanges of prisoners) to intercede for his friend, Dr. William Bea