It was only twenty-five years after Doctor Shuckburg's joke when Lord Cornwallis marched into the lines of these same old ragged Continentals to surrender his army and his sword to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_. Francis Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the father of Joseph Hopkinson, the author of _Hail Columbia_, adapted the words of his famous song _The Battle of the Kegs_, to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_. David Bushnell, the inventor of the torpedo, in December, 1777, had set adrift at night a large number of kegs charged with gunpowder, which were designed to explode on coming in contact with the British vessels in the Delaware. They failed in their object, but, exploding in the vicinity, created intense alarm in the fleet, which kept up for hours a continuous discharge of cannon and small arms at every object in the river. This was "the battle of the kegs." Verses without number have been sung to the tune of _Yankee Doodle_, but the ballad given here is the one that was best known and most frequently sung during the war for independence. They are said to have been written by a gentleman of Connecticut whose name has not survived. The exact date of their first publication is not known, but as these verses were sung at the Battle of Bunker Hill it must have been as early as 1775. [Illustration] [Illustration: _FRANCIS SCOTT KEY_] _THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER._ O say, can you see by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming! And the rocket's red glare, The bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows now conceals, now discloses? Now it catches the gleam Of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream; 'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh, long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save The hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!