day, the band struck up "The Star Spangled Banner," and the people gave their patriotic emotions full sway in singing the song of the flag triumphant.

There is no other song that stirs one's patriotic blood with more vigor in any great national emergency than this anthem of the flag. One week after the blowing up of the battleship Maine, the orchestra, at Daly's Theatre in New York, had played a few bars of the regular program, when suddenly it changed to "The Star Spangled Banner." The patriotic tune had not proceeded far before there came a tremendous yell. No one knew from whence it came, for it seemed to come from everywhere at once. A report of the scene says that the patriotic play-goers forgot their surroundings, and, leaping to their feet, cheered in a way that drowned the orchestra. Women waved their fans, handkerchiefs and programs, others joined in the refrain, and finally the whole audience rose and sang the inspiring words until the music ceased; and the soul-stirring scene closed with a mighty shout that fairly shook the walls. It was said that not another such event had been witnessed in any New York theater since civil war times. It was an outburst of emotion inspired by

the song, and was indicative of the state of the public mind in reference to the Cuban question. The circumstance illustrates the fact that "American patriotism is always on tap, and that the American people stand ever ready to leap, like an armed giant, into the fight at the first call of duty."

One of the most thrilling incidents in the annals of war, showing the power of patriotic song, was that on the ramparts of Santiago on that memorable Friday, the 1st of July, 1898. I think it was in the Twenty-first regulars, that man after man was fast falling in blood and death before a blazing fire of Mauser bullets, when the soldiers, catching a fresh gleam of the flag at a critical moment, spontaneously began to sing "The Star Spangled Banner," and its majestic strains so thrilled the souls of the men that they seemed to be nerved by some superhuman power to defy the storm of battle, and to win the victory that sealed the fate of Santiago.

CHAPTER VI.

"MY COUNTRY, 'TIS OF THEE."

MONG the mysteries of human life none is farther beyond our power of penetration than the inspired moment that comes to some soul, and out of which is born a great song that moves the heart of the world. These single flashes of inspiration, producing songs that have so powerfully affected the destinies of humanity, are never repeated, in an equal degree, in the same individual. Every poet of the soul, every minstrel of our joys and hopes and heart-experiences, has his masterpiece; and it seems to have been foreordained that he shall never bring forth another of like merit. There are thousands of things in these strange lives of ours that we cannot explain, and this is one of them. It is as great a mystery as love, or the union of soul and body. Brander Matthews says that “no man has ever yet sat him down