"And what will you do afterwards?"
"Send it safely back again."
"But if I should refuse you admission?"
"Your house will be level with the dust in five minutes."
Fortunately, the stamped paper never reached Connecticut, and the act was repealed soon after.
The eventful year, 1774, arrived. Putnam was fifty-six years of age, a somewhat portly personage, weighing two hundred pounds, with a round, full countenance, adorned by curly locks, now turning gray—the very picture of a hale, hearty, good-humored, upright and downright country gentleman. News came that the port of Boston was closed, its business suspended, its people likely to be in want of food. The farmers of the neighborhood contributed a hundred and twenty-five sheep, which Putnam himself drove to Boston, sixty miles off, where he had a cordial reception by the people, and was visited by great numbers of them at the house of Dr. Warren, where he lived. The polite people of Boston were delighted with the scarred old hero, and were pleased to tell anecdotes of his homely ways and fervent, honest zeal. He mingled freely, too, with the British officers, who chaffed him, as the modern saying is, about his coming down to Boston to fight. They told him that twenty great ships and twenty regiments would come unless the people submitted.
"If they come," said Putnam, "I am ready to treat them as enemies."
One day in the following spring, April twentieth, while he was ploughing in one of his fields with a yoke of oxen driven by his son, Daniel, a boy of fifteen, an express reached him giving him the news of the battle of Lexington, which had occurred the day before. Daniel Putnam has left a record of what his father did on this occasion.
"He loitered not," wrote Daniel, "but left me, the driver of his team, to unyoke it in the furrow, and not many days after to follow him to camp."
Colonel Putnam mounted a horse, and set off instantly to alarm the officers of militia in the neighboring towns. Returning home a few hours after, he found hundreds of minute-men assembled, armed and equipped, who had chosen him for their commander. He accepted the command, and, giving them orders to follow, he pushed on without dismounting, rode the same horse all night, and reached Cambridge next morning at sunrise, still wearing the checked shirt which he had had on when ploughing in his field. As Mr. Bancroft remarks, he brought to his country's service an undaunted courage and a devoted heart. His services during the Revolution are known to almost every reader. Every one seems to have liked him, for he had a very happy turn for humor, sang a good song, and was a very cheerful old gentleman.