The Fourth of July is observed as the Birthday of Independence. This is the date the Document bears. The events leading up to the adoption of the Declaration are recounted in Monograph Five in this number of The Mentor. Subsequent events were as follows: On July fifth Congress authorized the official promulgation of Independence, ordering that broadsides, signed by John Hancock and Charles Thomson, the President and Secretary of Congress, be sent to the several assemblies, the army, and other colonial bodies, and “that it be proclaimed in each of the United States.” On July sixth it was ordered “that the Sheriff read or cause to be read and proclaimed at the State House, Philadelphia, on Monday, the eighth of July, instant at 12 o’clock noon, the Declaration of the Representatives of the United States of America.” July 8, 1776, broke “a warm, sunshiny morning.” Officers, constables, members of committees and the people at large assembled in the State House Yard, and there amidst the waving of flags and the fluttering of banners, the Declaration was read by John Nixon “in a voice clear and distinct,” and greeted with loud cheers. This was the first time the Declaration was read in public. The stories of the bright-eyed boy, and immense crowds storming the doors of Congress on July _fourth_, and of the Declaration being read on that day from the steps are pronounced “pure inventions” by historical authorities. We have the record, also, that on the eighth of July, “near the hour of twelve,” the bell was first rung for the Proclamation of the Declaration.