Charles Edward Putney Part 10

C. K.

Mr. Putney, the most perfect man I have ever known. Only a few words are necessary to say that though I knew him only for a short while, he stood as a symbol of my utmost ideal in man.

Justice, kindness, love and brotherhood were living in his heart. His most beautiful characteristic and the most precious was his consideration for others.

G. E. R.

What especially appealed to me in Mr. Putney was his love for his pupils. He always tried to help them in every possible way. He even stayed at school an hour or so after the school had closed to help those "who might wish to come for help," as he always said in his pleasing tone. I shall never forget his words, "Well, you will have it to-morrow?"

when some person was not prepared with his lesson.

No greater loss could be sustained by the school than this giving up of Mr. Putney.

D. R.

Mr. Putney was a man dearly loved by all who knew him. His gentle ways, his remarkable whole-heartedness and his polished manners are characteristics of a man who was a great but modest hero in the great Civil War.

He had no favorites among the pupils but he was the favorite of the pupils. Thus we mourn the loss of Mr. Putney next to the loss of a near relative.

C. T.

When I first saw Mr. Putney I was impressed by his dignity and his kind face. After knowing him better, what appealed to me most forcibly was the absolute confidence and trust he had in his pupils. This trust in us made us want to do our work well, and made us feel that we must do our work well so that we would deserve his trust.

"Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul."

When we heard of Mr. Putney's pa.s.sing all was silence; that was the only tribute one could give. Mere words, mere music,--nothing reaches the summit of a life given over to service. His creed was, What do we live for if it is not to make life a little less difficult for others. Surely that is the highest goal of any human soul. He lived so that to come into his presence was to be warmed and cheered as by the sun. By a life heroic he conquered death.

Whenever I looked at Mr. Putney and the flag in a.s.sembly, I could not help connect him in some way with Abraham Lincoln and the great struggle for freedom. He used to carry himself in such a soldierly manner.

Whenever he spoke to us it was a rare treat.

H. M. B.

ADDRESS OF DR. SMART AT THE BURLINGTON HIGH SCHOOL

You have not asked me to speak to you this morning about Mr. Putney because I can tell you anything about him which you do not already know.

In fact it does not matter very much who speaks to you about him. You only wish to have an occasion to recall a familiar and delightful and impressive teacher. You wish someone to do what Mark Antony did for the Romans and tell you what you yourselves do know and enable you to repeat the experience of Samson's mother in the scriptures who said about the angel's visit, "The man came to me who came to me the other day."

You have set me a difficult and an easy task. Difficult because you knew the man and open your ears for words good enough to speak about him, and easy because you knew the man and can yourselves supply what I may miss, and smooth my awkwardness by the harmony of your own recollections.

You might be interested to hear something about Thomas Arnold of Rugby, Tom Brown's teacher, or about Bronson Alcott who had such strange ways in discipline, requiring an offending pupil to punish him, holding out his own hand for the ferrule; or about Tagore in India who requires his boys to go out early in the morning to sit for half an hour under some bush or tree for quiet meditation. Talk about these men might perhaps appeal to your general interest in teachers and teaching, but what you crave this morning is different. You wish to repeat the experience of Achilles who slept beside the many-voiced sea, the _Polu phloisboio Thala.s.ses_, and dreamed that his slain friend Patroclus came back to him:

"Like him in all things--stature, beautiful eyes And voice and garments which he wore in life A marvellous semblance of the living man."

Or the experience of Peter when his Master appeared to him and freshened the old love and admiration and moved him to carry on the Master's service in his own life.

You have set me a very difficult task but when I give you an inch you will take an ell. Where I stumble you will walk with sure step. If I am too much like Hamlet with old Polonius saying this cloud is like an elephant or a camel, you will see a cloud like that which went before the Israelites in the desert--a high spiritual presence to guide them.

A few days ago he was here. The memory is full of life. His stalwart figure clothed with gentlemanly care and taste, his bearing and movement so fine, so dignified, so courteous and so pleasant. His voice so special to him, with all harshness fined out of it, tuned as their voices are who have in their spirits the accent and habit of good will.

And that fine face, the out-of-doors sign of good thinking and good feeling, practiced long and become a second nature. That shapely, well-proportioned, roomy head with its glory of white hair. He had, it seemed to me, in his physical presence the charm of old age without its weakness. He was not a sentimental, flowery man. He was naturally perhaps like the rock in the desert which Moses struck and drew water from it. The rock did not look as if it hid a fountain of living water, but he took duty to wife. He loved to do his duty. He could not be comfortable in any other course and doing his duty became his joy, his life. Wherever you found him, in school, in church, in the state, in the Grand Army, he was at his post, on guard, awake, alert, devoted. He did not go with the crowd into the Civil War. He thought alone and deeply.

He weighed the matter by himself. He compared his obligation to his father on the old farm with the call of the Union and concluded that he ought to go. After a long life of fidelity to obligation he could not breathe easily in any other atmosphere. He went simply and straight to his post with his whole gift and might. Duty--

"Stern lawgiver! Yet thou dost wear The G.o.dhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon the face, Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong."

Mr. Putney was an instructive teacher. Some of you know it. Many old pupils gratefully acknowledge his service. Both in the cla.s.sroom and in private personal contact he had an enthusiasm for teaching. He managed to secure knowledge of what he taught. He was interested in his pupils and he was interested in his subject and interested in bringing the two together. Teaching I should think would be difficult without all of those interests. No doubt Mr. Putney had a gift for teaching, but in teaching as in other kinds of work one does much to make one's own gift.

Barring conspicuousness for a calling, this creative energy is the man himself. I like to remind young people of this fact because they are wondering what they will do in life; what they are fitted to do. With some reservations it may be said that one becomes fitted to do whatever one determines to do with one's whole mind and soul and strength. Think how hit or miss our choices often are. Accidental circ.u.mstances or chance openings when we are looking around for a job, something which happens to be in the air when we come on the stage have more to do with our first choices than any supposed genius for this or that.

When men and women who have begun their career in this quite casual manner succeed, then people say they have a remarkable gift for their work. The gift in a very real and large sense is the creation of their own energy. I believe that it was so with Mr. Putney. He was diligent and faithful in his calling and his calling opened its treasures to him.

You remember what the Scripture says: "No man having tasted old wine straightway desireth the new for he saith the old is better." Mr. Putney ill.u.s.trated the saying. There was a graciousness, a consideration, a pleasantness and good will in his ripe age which made it beautiful and drew warm personal feeling to him. A custom of the heart grew up about his name. Some of you loved him. That feeble old soldier whom he visited every Sunday afternoon is lonely without him. He had "that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." Not a few boys and girls have reason to remember with tenderness his delicate and patient sympathy.

I received a circular the other day signed by my old teacher of mathematics. I have not seen him for nearly forty years but reading his words, seeing his name I lifted him again before my mind as if I sat again before him in the Albany Academy. I recall his bodily presence, his voice, his manner. I am grateful for his clear, and to me inescapably conclusive teaching, and something I cannot a.n.a.lyze came back to me--perhaps I should better say, came over me for my debt to him has been growing all these years. Something of him has taken root in my life and grown and borne fruit. In youth we take such influences for granted. We are careless about them. We absorb them without thanks. But the years bring thought and thought reveals service and we are grateful.

"All my best is dressing old words new Spending again what is already spent For as the sun is daily new and old So is my love still telling what is told."

In coming years some of you will be thinking and saying about Mr. Putney with growing appreciation what some who are now in the thick of life are already saying in the words of Scripture "Demetrius hath good report of all men and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record."

MAKING LIFE A BENEDICTION

Whatever our path in life or the aim of our ambition, the real measure of our service and success is the influence we exert upon the present generation and those who come after us. We may do this through our everyday life, through our individual service, through our benefactions.

When our lives are summed up, we are asked not what we gained, but what we gave, not how much wealth we acc.u.mulated, but how much good we did through our service and the means at our disposal.

To grow old beautifully in service for humanity has been named the height of human achievement. It falls to few men to do this in the measure reached by Professor Putney, who has just pa.s.sed out from this community mourned by all. His long life joined generations far separated. Those who paid tribute to his life and individual service included the rapidly thinning "blue line" of the veterans of the war for the preservation of the Union, for human freedom, of nearly three-quarters of a century ago as well as hundreds of school children who had learned to love him through the close a.s.sociation of teacher and pupil. It is given to only one man in ten thousand thus to link close to his own personality the genuine affections of organizations representing extreme youth and advanced age.

To have done all this is proof that Professor Putney in every sense of the expression "grew old beautifully." The human interest element serves to bring out this side of his life still more impressively. It was his ambition that he might teach on his eightieth birthday. A few more days would have witnessed the consummation of this allowable wish. His conscientiousness was supreme however. He remarked to his granddaughter that if he did not recover in two weeks it would not be right for him to retain his position as a teacher in the Burlington High School, great as was his desire to celebrate his fourscore anniversary "in harness."