Charles Edward Putney Part 5

The first impression which Mr. Putney made upon me when he joined our circle of teachers in the Academy was that of a man of strength, high moral purpose and rare teaching ability, an impression which grew to a certainty as the years went on and he became our princ.i.p.al. His courtesy, unfailing kindness and good fellowship made it a pleasure to work with and under him, and I shall always remember him as a true and valued friend and a great teacher. "What more can we desire for our friends than this," as was said of that other beloved teacher, Edward Bowen of England, "that in remembering them there should be nothing to regret, that all who came under their influence should feel themselves for ever thereafter the better for that influence."

L. JENNIE COLBY.

It is difficult to put in words my estimate of Mr. Putney. He was a loyal friend to everyone he knew, always looking for ways of encouragement and help. Many a scholar can testify to the truth of this. We know his thoroughness as a teacher, we remember his reverence for the Bible, his prayers, his loyalty to church and its organizations, his devotion to his Heavenly Father.

I think his influence for good will extend to the ends of the earth. It has been a great blessing to know him. I have been so glad he could keep up his work to the last.

MARY c.u.mMINGS CLARK.

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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 subst.i.tute 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.

MARGARET BELL MERRILL, '94.

It is a great pleasure for me to add my word of appreciation with respect to the splendid influence that Mr. Putney exerted at St.

Johnsbury Academy. He was always fair, always friendly, and his sense of humor was a delight. A thorough scholar himself, he was not satisfied with superficial work. He was able to sympathize with the pupil's view of life and yet he knew how to enlarge that view. The branches of Latin and Greek which he taught did not afford him full scope for expressing the originality that was a remarkable part of his character; but I remember a course of reading in English literature which our cla.s.s took under him as an extra, and there he was able to disclose the poetic part of his nature, and we were able to know him as a thinker and a seer.

I look back with grat.i.tude to the days at "St. Jack."

GEORGE R. MONTGOMERY, '88.

I first saw Mr. Putney in August, 1881, when I came alone and somewhat homesick to seek admission to the Academy. He was standing on the steps of South Hall ready to greet new students with his quiet friendly manner and sincere expression of interest. He made us feel at once that we had in him a friend, one who understood us and expected the best from us. I like to recall this picture of him for it gave me an impression of the man that I have never had occasion to change.

Mr. Putney was a great teacher. Thorough in detail and wise in daily drill that he knew was necessary for our success, he showed a love for the literature that he taught and an enthusiasm that was contagious.

Fortunate the boy or girl who learned Virgil under his wise guidance.

Always sympathetic and encouraging, he could detect the bluffer and discourage one who tried to get through his lessons without adequate preparation. He corrected our mistakes, but encouraged our attempts to succeed, even though we often failed. He appealed to our ambition, to our sense of obligation, and to our pride; and thus he led rather than drove us to our work. And work we did; we did not dare to disappoint him, we did not wish to disappoint him. Later in college we had occasion more than once to be thankful for the wise and sound training we had had under his leadership.

It is, however, the personality of the man that lives with us, whether we remember him best in the cla.s.sroom or in the chapel exercises, in the dormitory or in some other phase of his active life. He was quiet, even-tempered, but forceful. His voice was not often raised, but it carried conviction. His directions were accepted without protest or question; or if, as I remember well, on one occasion we did protest, he had a firm, convincing manner that made us accept his word as final. And yet there was no rancor left, we felt that Mr. Putney was right. As a rule he was serious, but he had a merry twinkle in his eye that told of a sense of humor and an ability to join with his students in their good times. In a very real sense he entered into the lives of all of us and made upon us that impression that makes us rise and say with one voice, "He was a Christian gentleman."

GILBERT S. BLAKELY, '84.

The personality of Mr. Putney has stayed with me during all these years with singular distinctness. Many other teachers, whose influence has been undoubted and deeply felt, shape themselves in memory somewhat vaguely. But Mr. Putney stands out clearly and vividly, as if the days under him at St. Johnsbury Academy were but yesterday. Here was a man quiet and una.s.suming, and yet I am conscious, and always have been conscious, of a certain power that flowed from him into the lives of his pupils.

Such a force does not lend itself readily to a.n.a.lysis. Like most fundamental things, it is subtle, undefinable. But some elements in the character of Mr. Putney in the retrospect are clear as air. In the first place, he was a born teacher. His scholarship was backed by thoroughness of application in the cla.s.sroom. A part of his painstaking self pa.s.sed into the mental processes, and so into the equipment, of those who sat under him. His instruction went deep. It was thorough plowing of the mind. Slip-shod methods were repugnant to his nature. Then, too, how patient he was! For every student he seemed to carry in his mind an ideal of development that made every effort on his part toward that end a real joy, and so he first grounded him in basic things and then built on that foundation.

With poise and self-control, though not physically robust, he managed a large school in such a way that it ran as smoothly as a well-oiled machine. We took it all for granted then. But we see now, especially those of us who are teachers ourselves, the meaning and the reason of it all, and we trace the fact to its source in an able and inspiring personality.

Mr. Putney had a quiet glow of humor, and many an incident comes to mind to show how large and wholesome a part this characteristic played in his career. But most of all I would pay tribute to the Christian gentleman.

His idealism was not too lofty for "human nature's daily food." Rather it expressed itself in practical devotion to the best interests of his pupils, to good things, and to n.o.ble causes. He was a leader because he allowed himself humbly to be led by something above him. He moulded character because he was himself being moulded by spiritual forces. Not ambitious in the worldly sense, he came into his own long before his gentle life pa.s.sed from among us. I fancy that, could he do so, he would tell us that his real ambition has been realized. In Mr. Putney we are gratefully aware of that gracious thing, the distribution of a rare personality through the lives of others, the multiplication of self in terms of helpfulness to the world.

HENRY D. WILD, '84.

Those were days of exceptional privilege in the eighties and nineties for the shy but eager boys and girls of rural Vermont who found their way to St. Johnsbury Academy, there, under Mr. Putney and the able and friendly faculty of his choice, to catch enlarged vision and the preparation to fulfill it.

The quiet, un.o.btrusive life of such as Mr. Putney lends itself to fewer striking, outstanding memories than more brilliant careers, yet how positive the impression and far-reaching the influence, and how sweet the incidents one does recall!

My first acquaintance revealed his friendly interest and thoughtfulness.

Discovering that I, a timid new-comer, was the only girl enrolled for Greek with twenty young men, he sent a kindly word of encouragement and the hope that I would not let the fact discourage me in my purpose. That pledge of sympathy on the part of one of my first male instructors had large weight in deciding me to brave the ordeal. It was, too, a pledge fully and most wisely carried out, so discriminatingly administered by daily, tactful consideration as to set me wholly at ease and to establish the most natural, unconscious comradeship with the cla.s.s.

The only visible evidence of his thought came in occasional approving comments upon the little rivalry in scholarship in the cla.s.s and the requests that I conduct the cla.s.s sometimes when he was necessarily absent. Thus he made of the experience, by his fine tact and wisdom, a happy and fruitful one.

I was early inspired with a confidence that the ideals he held for us were but those of his own life. The urgent suggestions to drill and review our lessons thoroughly were the more forceful when I learned that it had been a habit of all his own student life to review each Sat.u.r.day the entire daily work of the week. A trying epidemic of colds and coughs was prevailing one winter, disturbing school exercises greatly. At the close of chapel one morning Mr. Putney told us in his quiet, earnest manner the dangers of allowing a cough to become aggravated and the possibility of entirely controlling it. Skeptical of this, I well remember with what gleeful malice I scoffed at it in the hearing of a teacher who made the lesson one of life-long practice by telling me of the heroic, thorough treatment to which Mr. Putney had in early life subjected himself, so that he had spoken out of personal experience again. When his life had been despaired of because of supposedly fatal illness he had effected a complete recovery by checking the deep-seated cough.

When in later years I found that his benign presence and quiet influence was bearing daily fruit in the same, or even greater respect and reverence with a younger generation of students, I realized afresh under what a rare teacher I had had the privilege of coming, and how profoundly true it is that such a personality teaches constantly, often when least suspected, the finest and most profound lessons. The vision which he communicated is one of the most precious treasures.

BERTHA M. TERRILL, '91.

I appreciate exceedingly this opportunity to add my words of tribute to the memory and worth of Mr. Putney.

To him I am indebted beyond measure for the incentive, encouragement, aid and inspiration which he gave me while a student at the Academy.

His was a life long in years, ripe in scholarship, and rich in unselfish and generous service. In him were combined the qualities of the best type of teacher.