He probably had received
refreshment, food and drink at intervals, but he had not stopped to
change his working clothes for better, and went off on both long rides
in the farmer's frock which he wore when plowing in the field behind his
house.
Though the Putnam mansion at Brooklyn Green is no longer in existence,
the great trees that stood in front of it in his time still cast their
grateful shade upon its site, and the walled field, sloping toward a
verdant meadow, may be seen by the visitor, much as it lay to the sun on
that lovely morning in April, 1775, when the farmer-patriot was
peacefully running his furrows.
The distance to Cambridge was nearly ninety miles, yet Putnam covered it
in an all-night's ride, going pretty much over the same ground he had
traversed when, a young man of twenty-two, he had taken his wife and
child to their new home in Connecticut. Thirty-five years had elapsed
since the young pioneer had made his first venture in the world, ten of
which he had passed in fighting for the King against whose soldiers he
was soon to lead his fellow countrymen in war.
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