Find draughts which still refresh but never cloy."
LETTERS RECEIVED ON MR. PUTNEY'S SEVENTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY
I am glad you are to have a birthday tomorrow. I feel sure that it will be a happy birthday. Your children and grandchildren will see to it that the day is properly celebrated.
It is a great pleasure to look back on the days spent in St. Johnsbury when your influence meant so much to us. You can never know how strongly your personality and your life influenced the boys and girls in the Academy, especially those of us who were away from home. Many of the things which you said to us, the time or occasion of saying them and the place too are very vividly recalled after thirty years. You in St. Johnsbury, four or five professors at Dartmouth and perhaps a half dozen other men, make up a small group of men who have given me most in the way of stimulation and encouragement. To express adequately my gratitude is impossible, but out of a full heart I do thank you and am glad of this opportunity to extend my best wishes to you for continued health and happiness.
Yours very sincerely,
David N. Blakely, '85.
You have been living in my life all these long years since the old St. Johnsbury Academy days.