lf, even to the extent of baking his own bread.

THREE GREAT AMERICAN SONGS AND THEIR AUTHORS

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

"Poetry and music," says Sir John Lubbock, "unite in song. From the
earliest ages song has been the sweet companion of labor. The rude
chant of the boatman floats upon the water, the shepherd sings upon the
hill, the milkmaid in the dairy, the plowman in the field. Every trade,
every occupation, every act and scene of life, has long had its own
especial music. The bride went to her marriage, the laborer to his
work, the old man to his last long rest, each with appropriate and
immemorial music."

It is strange that Lubbock did not mention specifically the power of
music in inspiring the soldier as he marches to the defense of his
country, or in arousing the spirit of patriotism and kindling the love
of country, whether in peace or war, in every bosom. "Let me make the
songs of a country," Fletcher of Saltoun has well said, "and I care not
who makes its laws."

Not to know the words and the air of the national anthem or chief
patriotic songs of one's country is considered little less than a
disgrace. To know something of their authors and the occasion which
inspired them, or the conditions under which they were composed, gives
additional interest to the songs themselves.

Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-spangled Banner," one of the, if
not the most, popular of our national songs, was born in Frederick
County, Maryland, on August 1, 1779. He was the son of John Ross Key,
an officer in the Revolutionary army.

Young Key's early education was carried on under the direction of his
father. Later he became a student in St. John's College, from which
institution he was graduated in his nineteenth year. Immediately after
his graduation he began to study law under his uncle, Philip Barton
Key, one of the ablest lawyers of his time. He was admitted to the bar
in 1801, and commenced to practice in Fredericktown, Maryland, where he
won the reputation of an eloquent advocate. After a few years' practice
in Fredericktown, he removed to Washington, where he was appointed
district attorney for the District of Columbia.

Young Key was as widely known and admired as a writer of hymns and
ballads as he was as a lawyer of promise. But the production of the
popular national anthem which crowned him with immortality has so
overshadowed the rest of his life work that we remember him only as its
author