Excerpt from The Story of Patriots' Day: Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1775; With Poems Brought Out on the First Observation of the Anniversary Holiday and the Forms in Which It Was Celebrated The bill abolishing the practice of appointing annually a day of "fasting and prayer," having passed the Massachusetts House of Representatives, received the approving vote of the Senate on March 16, 1894, and was on the same day signed by the governor, Frederic T. Greenhalge. The bill also established the nineteenth day of April as an annual holiday. The latter, therefore, is the legitimate successor of Fast Day, which had come to be observed chiefly by its desecration. The first proclamation of the new holiday was issued on the eleventh day of April, 1894, and gave it, most appropriately, the name Patriots Day. Neither the statute nor the proclamation prescribed any definite form of celebration; consequently, there is ample scope and freedom for the preferences of communities and organizations in its observance. The proclamation was as follows: - "By an act of the Legislature, duly approved, the nineteenth day of April has been made a legal holiday. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.