crucial period of our history. I am not surprised when she tells me
that she watched the battle of Fredericksburg from her window as she
lay ill in her room, and that she witnessed the burning of Richmond
after the surrender. I recognize the fact that life has been a harder
battle, since all her own have passed over the line and left her to
the lonely conflict, than was ever a contest in those days of war.

She tells me that the Key relics have all been taken to the Betsy Ross
house in Philadelphia. What they were she does not know, for they were
all packed in boxes when she first came to the Key mansion. The only
object left from the possessions of the man who made that old dwelling
a shrine upon which Americans of to-day ought to place offerings of
patriotism is an old frame in a small room at the end of the hall. On
the bottom of the frame is printed in large black letters the name,
Francis Scott Key. Some jagged fragments within the frame indicate
that something, either picture or flag, has been hastily and
carelessly removed.

Finding no relic of the man whose life once glorified the now dark and
gloomy house, I hold with the greater tenacity the mental picture I
have of the old flag I used to see in the National Museum. Faded,
discolored, and tattered, it is yet the most glorious piece of bunting
our country owns to-day--the flag that floated over Fort McHenry
through the fiery storm of that night of anxious vigil in which our
national anthem was born.

In this old house on Bridge Street Francis Scott Key lived when he was
Attorney for the District of Columbia, and in a small brick office
adjoining his home he did the work that placed him in the front rank
of the American bar.