If I were to put into one word what seems to me the keynote of Mr. Putney's life as I knew him, it would be service. There was never a moment that I was not conscious that even when he was in physical suffering, which, alas! was often, he was ready to help in every way possible. This patience and kindness were unfailing, and his sense of humor, which must have helped him as well as us, often pricked our difficulties, and showed us how unimportant they really were. I was with him only two years, but his character, and the lessons learned from him have been a very real influence in my life ever since.
Elizabeth Washburn Worthen.
The distance of time (now forty years) since those Academy days does not dim the fond recollection and appreciation of my teachers at St. Johnsbury Academy. And of them all, before or since, there is no one who holds a higher place in my esteem than Mr. Putney. Though engaged in teaching mathematics and astronomy during the greater part of this time, I have not forgotten, nor ever shall, the essentials he taught—some things even in Latin and Greek, but far more in earnestness and sincerity and purpose. And I prize also the closer touch with his sensitive, kindly, sterling personality afforded by the few months when I was privileged to teach as a substitute at the Academy.
Would that we had more such men now in the ranks of the profession.
F. B. Brackett, '82.
With high reverence for what men had known as wisdom and beauty in the past, with sane and clear-eyed understanding of the shifting needs of the present, with confident faith in the ultimate good, whatever the future, he taught many lessons which we did not know until long afterwards that we had learned.