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.
All boys and girls who may be inclined to bewail the impossibility of
being of service under present conditions or limitations will establish
their privilege of serving as he served, if they bear thoroughly in mind
that Professor Putney did what he did, not through the aid of wealth or
position or the favor of powerful friends, but solely through his own
individual service to others.
Of such it is written "that he shall doubtless come again with rejoicing
bringing his sheaves with him." In the years to follow the sheaves of
influence of Professor Putney's life will come many times to the youth
whose privilege it has been to be associated with him, and they will
rejoice that his influence entered their careers. Who shall measure the
influences for good that he has set in motion in the young lives and in
the life of our community? Happy the man to whom it is thus given to
grow old beautifully! Thrice happy that man who in thus growing old
beautifully is able to bring down to the latest generations the best
traditions of the past and through them to make his life a benediction
to many generations to come.--_Burlington Free Press._