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 accumulated, 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 passed 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 association 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."
He continued to the end one of the youngest of aged men. He kept in touch with youth and was thus able to reflect the spirit and intense interest of youth. He was constantly aiding boys in his home who needed help in their studies. He gave of himself ungrudgingly in this way and refused recompense. It was with him a labor of love. If he had frailties, and who of us has not, he governed them instead of letting them have dominion over him, thereby showing himself better "than he that taketh a city." For his pupils and his associates as well as for those who associated with him in his Christian work in the College Street Church he was always the gentleman of the old school and the embodiment of unobtrusive beneficence combined.