st, "Young Put" had a fall, owing to a branch
breaking in his hands. He was caught by a lower limb, however, and there
he hung, suspended by his clothes betwixt heaven and earth. His cries
attracted some companions, one of whom he commanded (as he had a gun) to
fire a bullet at the limb and try to break it. This the boy did, after
much coaxing on Putnam's part, and was so successful that his friend
came tumbling to the ground. He was bruised and lamed, but no bones were
broken; and the very next day the intrepid boy climbed up to the nest
again, and this time secured it. That was the "way with 'Old Put,'" the
man who in later years succeeded "Young Put" the youth. His motto was:
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

He always tried, and with his utmost endeavor, to accomplish the task
that faced him at the time. What is more, he generally succeeded; and
that is the chief reason why he is considered worthy a biography. There
are few men, perhaps, who did so many things worthy of emulation, and so
few unworthy. Dangerously near the latter, however, was one act of his
youth, when he caught a vicious bull in a pasture, and, having mounted
astride the animal's back, with spurs on his heels, rode the furious
creature around the field until it finally fell from exhaustion, after
seeking refuge in a swamp.

Young Putnam's education, as may have been inferred already, was
obtained mostly in the woods and open fields. While he possessed great
mental endowments, as afterward displayed in his career, yet his early
education was grossly neglected, in the school and college sense. Having
mastered the rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic, he was
considered well equipped for his destined calling, which was to be that
of a farmer. Throughout his whole life he suffered from this neglect of
early instruction. His letters, particularly, though they always
"displayed the goodness of his heart, and frequently the strength of his
native genius, with a certain laconic mode of expression, and an
unaffected epigrammatic turn," were "fearfully and wonderfully made,"
the despair of his correspondents and the ridicule of his enemies.

It is doubtful if he had any greater ambition than to become a good
farmer, as good as was his father before him, and like him, attain to a
competency. He was already fairly well to do the year he became of age,
for his father, after providing generously for the other children, had
bequeathed to