The spot whereon the flag-staff stood which bore the stars and stripes that fervid morning upon which Francis Scott Key arose, saw that our flag was still there and jotted down the national anthem on the back of an envelope before going down to breakfast, still conspires with a large and lusty successor of this first staff to keep Old Glory flying in the heavens. The immediate surroundings, the harbor outlook, the busy city now sending its clamor over the point on which the old fort stands, all have changed in the years, but the part of the fort from which the banner of the new republic was sent forth so many years ago has undergone little transformation. A triangle of ground pointing toward open water, and a bare staff, these have little that Time can work wizardry with. The simple focus of Key’s inspiration has not been lost in the years, but the rest of the picture which roused his songster’s mood is only to be brought back by effort of imagination. [Illustration: A View from an Aeroplane The Guard-House FORT McHENRY, BALTIMORE, MD.] Fort McHenry is now a public park, the last federal trooper having been drawn out of the reservation in the fall of 1913. As such it has been beautified by the City of Baltimore, if the placing of benches in convenient spots, the sodding of terraces, and the cleaning of walks are to be considered in the nature of beautification; and it is occasionally used by Baltimoreans as a place of airing. Situated on a point of land separating the two parts of Baltimore’s heart-shaped harbor, it gives charming views of the city. Gazing straight ahead from the walls of old Fort McHenry, one can see far down the river (very wide here) into the distance where the river joins the Chesapeake Bay. In the blue of the horizon can be faintly discerned the low squatty outline of the little hexagon of stone built by General Robert E. Lee before the Civil War and known as Fort Carroll. To the right hand, from this vantage point on the water side of Fort McHenry’s parapets, lies Spring Garden, the larger but the less busy part of Baltimore’s water-front. To the left is the entrance to “the harbor,” as it is affectionately called by Baltimoreans, with entire disregard for that magnificent half-moon of water of more recent development which we have already descried to the right. The various points of historic interest in the fort and its grounds are marked with tablets and appropriate memorials, this work having been done in recent years by the city, by the Maryland chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and by various public-spirited bodies of the municipality.