a physician were freely given, and formed afterward the main plea
for his lenient treatment while a prisoner.

As the British army reached Upper Marlborough, General Winder was
concentrating his troops at Bladensburg. The duty of assigning
the regiments to their several positions as they arrived on the
field was performed by Francis Scott Key, a young aide-de-camp to
General Smith. Key was a practising lawyer in Washington who had
a liking for the military profession. He was on duty during the
hot and dusty days which ended in the defeat of the American
army. Subsequently, he could have read a newspaper at his
residence in Georgetown by the light of the burning public
buildings at Washington, and he passed with indignant heart the
ruins left by the retreating army when, after a night of
frightful storm, they silently departed in a disorderly forced
march of thirty-five miles, to Upper Marlborough. He then knew
what any other city might expect upon which the "foul footsteps'
pollution" of the British might come.

The sorry appearance of the British army gave the Marlborough
people the idea that it had been defeated, and on the afternoon
of the following day Dr. Beanes and his friends celebrated a
supposed victory. Had they stayed in the noble old mansion that
the worthy but irascible doctor inhabited near Marlborough, "The
Star-Spangled Banner" would never have been written. Tempted by
the balminess of a warm September afternoon, however, the party
adjoined to a spring near the house, where, the negro servant
having carried out the proper utensils, the cool water was
tempered with those ingredients which mingle their congenial
essences to make up that still seductive drink, a Maryland punch.