Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860

again as it was cut down by the Tories, accompanying their work by singing every imaginable kind of ballad that would irritate the breast of the British sympathizers.

During the war of 1812, came the Star Spangled Banner, written to the accompaniment of shot and shell, while the author, Francis S. Key, was a prisoner on shipboard watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British, in the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born in the darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, and when the dawn broke and found the flag still floating over the fort, an earnest of the victory to come, its triumphant measures seemed the fitting pæan of American liberty.

The ballad of the camps had developed into the national anthem.

CHAPTER II

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

1780-1851

In the days when Louisiana was a province of Spain a little dark-eyed boy used to wander among the fields and groves of his father's plantation studying with