STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.

A PROCLAMATION BY THE GOVERNOR FOR A Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer.
The tender mercy and loving kindness which was vouchsafed to our fathers one hundred years ago, an acknowledgment of which induced them, in some special manner, to unitedly make confession of all past transgressions and seek "Divine Guidance" for the future, is a usage so closely connected with our national prosperity, that we, who are in the full enjoyment of the innumerable blessings which have been bequeathed unto us, should recognize the infinite goodness of him who has so mercifully ministered to our wants.

Mindful of this ancient custom, I do, by advice and with the consent of the Council, hereby appoint THURSDAY, THE 13th DAY OF APRIL NEXT, As a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer; and I earnestly recommend its religious observance throughout the state.

Let us, in public and in private, fervently pray that we may be encircled in the arms of our Heavenly Father, and be directed into paths that will "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;" that we may fully realize that the obligation continually rests upon us to acknowledge our dependence upon the Creator, and to ask of him forgiveness for our manifold sins, and divine help in the present and in the future; that he will bless and preserve our free governments with their republican institutions, to the end that the closing hours of the first century of our national existence may in some degree seem a fitting answer to the prayers of the fathers.
Given at the Council Chamber this the second day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six, and of the independence of the United States the one hundredth.

L. S.

P. C. CHENEY.

By His Excellency the Governor, with advice of Council:

B. F. PRESCOTT, Secretary of State.