Historic leaves, volume 2, April, 1903 - January, 1904

[86] sense of the incalculable value of his service to his country and ours, not to join with others in seeking to do ample justice to his memory, especially as regards the noblest work or deeds of his illustrious career. Mayor Glines, Governor Bates, and Lieutenant-Governor Guild made various fitting allusions to him in their addresses, but at a time when so much must have crowded upon their minds from the recorded annals that came to view, one can well understand how crisp and short must needs have been the mention of even the chiefest matters. I can only hope to fill out to some extent certain things that were so pertinently and effectively said; and the better to present what I would fain write, and to make the story as complete as I can or may under the circumstances and for the present purpose, let me quote here the allusions to which I have referred, and which I think may well be repeated in this connection.

Said Mayor Glines: ‘On the evening of June 16, 1775, this soil again resounded with the tramp of soldiers, as the gallant Colonel Prescott and a thousand men under his inspiring lead swept by on their way to Bunker Hill. It was here that on the night of June 16 General Putnam, the gallant “Old put” of ploughshare and wolf's-den fame, began throwing up the intrenchments which soon became the citadel of the works running from the Charles to the Mystic, and the very stronghold of the besieging American army.’ And he also said: ‘Prospect Hill is especially dear to us, not for the fact that its occupation by Putnam doubtless saved Cambridge, so vital to the enemy, and perhaps the very country; not that here it was, a month almost to a day after Bunker Hill was fought, that “an American flag was thrown to the breeze before an enemy,” the scarred ensign of the Third Connecticut Regiment, “Putnam's flag” ; not that here for many weary days were encamped the Massachusetts and Rhode Island troops of General Nathaniel Greene, nor because it was here that many of the troops of Burgoyne's surrendered army were quartered after Arnold's strategy got the better of them at Saratoga; not for records like these, but because here, on the first day of January, 1776, on which the new Continental Army was organized in the presence of our great and good