The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1871-08-24
THE sTAR-sPANGLED BANNER.
How ii was Composed and Set 10
Music, as Related by an OcIogena-
rian,

How ii was Composed and Set 10
Music, as Related by an OcIogena-
rian.
"And you knew Francis Key ?U
KNEW him! Why he lived but a
few doors above my fathers house.
There was once two brothers, John
Ross and Phillip Barton Key. Phillip
was an officer in the British army dur
ing the revolutionary war, while John
was in that of the United States. John
lived on Pope's creek, near Taney-
town, Frederick county, Maryland,
where Francis and his sister Anna,
Johns only children, were born.
There was an exiled Scotchman,
Mr.. Bruce-said to have been heir to
the throne of ScOtland-Who had built
a mill on Pepe's Creek, end there, in
the company of his noble old aristo-
crat, Frank spent his very early boy
hood. The brothers, Philip and John,
were large, manipulating fellows,
but Frank and Anna were of much
smaller mould. Anna Key was a
beautiful little girl, with the cheerful
est face and most pleasant smile I
ever saw. When they moved into
town, near my fathers, Frank was
half grown up, and ready to enter as a
law student with Roger b. Taney,
then at the head of the Frederick bar.
Roger was tall, gaUnt fellow, as
lean, they used to say, as Potomac
herring, and as Shrewd as the
shTewdest. He married bright little
Anna.
1t was like the union of hawk with
the skylark; but she lived to be the
wife of chief Justice of the United
States, and l never heard that either
of the marriage. Mr.. Taney
was a catholic and Frank an Epis-
not considered very jealous
and shary in his profession, and much
giving to dreaming. He went to Vii.
ginia and brought home q wife much
larger and taller than himself, went to
on Market street, and
had couple of little children when I
left home in 1909 to seek my fortune in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
'tYou have heard of Admiral Cock
burn, who commanded the British
fleet? The atroeiOus scoundrel =
Words can never paint the miserable
coward and bOaster in his true cOlors.
After his depredations along the east
ern shore of Maryland, there followed
the sacking of Washington, the battle
Of North Point, and the attempt of the
enemy to take the city of Baltimore
by water, as they had failed to do by
land. You know all about the bonn
bardment Of Fort McHenry, Septem-
Der 13, 1914. have gone over it again,
in fancy, hundreds of times, and tell
you Frank Key, patriotic as he was to
hearts core, could not help composing
that poem. 1t was forced out of him.
Just think He was a prisoner on
the fleet, which was anchored in two
miles of Fort McHenry, the city's de-
fence. He could watch all the enemy'S
and he knew the danger
they foreboded. Through the terrific
of that midnight fight,
while the sky was lit up with the fiery
courses of the flying bombs, do you
think he could sleep? AS the trouble
ceased upon the coming morning, and
he looked through the dim twilight
for the flag of his country, his heart
was sick with fear and doubt, could he
help the grand Outburst of that first
mists of the deep the banner lOomed
limly in the morning SUMS first rays,
and he exclaimed:
'Tis the Star-spangled Banner! On long
long may it wave,
Der the land of the free and the home of
the brave ~
It was prayer and praise, ali in one,
and there has never been anything
ike it since"
Mr.. Herndon stopped to wipe his
sweating face with his silk bandana
and take a few rapid
strides across the floor. He had for
gotten his cane and the weight of his
eighty years in this reminiscence of
his strong young manhood; and If
Admiral Cockburn had that moment
stood before him, in the fiesh-and. blood
nsolence of his real self, would have
been the chronicle of his fate.
"Have you heard from Francis
Keys poem q said one of our mess,
coming in one evening, as we laid
over the green hill near the
captains marquee. 1t was rude copy,
and written in a scTaWl which Horace
Greely might have mistaken for his
own. He read it aloud; once, twice,
three times, until the entire division
seemed electrified by its pathetic elO-
quence. An idea seized Fred. Durang.
up volume of old flute
music, which WAS in somebody's tent,
he impatiently whistled snatches of
tune after tune, just as they caught
his quick eye, One called 'Anacreon
in Heaven q have played it often,
for it was in my book that he found
it, stuck his fancy and rivited his at
tention. Note after note fell from his
puckered lips, until, with leap and
Shout, he exclaimed, Boys, I have it =
and fitting the tune to the words, there
rang out for the first time the song Of
the Star-Spangled Banner.
"HOW the men shouted and clapped,
for never was there a wedding of poe
try to music made under such inspir-
ing influences Getting a brief fur
Tough, the brothers sang it on the
stage of Holiday street theatre soon
after. at was caught up in the campo,
and sang around our bivOuac fires, and
Whistled in the streets, and, when
peace was declared, and we scattered
to our homes, carried to thousands OF
firesides as the most precious relic OF
the war of 1872. Ferdinand Durang
died. do not know where-and Frank
Keys bones lie in the cemetery at
FredericktOwn; but 1 guess that song
will live as long as there is an AmeTi.
can boy to sing it."
SEASONING OF .WOoD.-An English
writer states that small pieces of non
resinous wood can be seasoned per-
fectly by boiling four or five hours
the process ta king the sap out of the
wood which shrinks nearly one-tenth