PUTNAM MEMOIR OF CHARLES EDWIN PUTNAM. 5 



of whom, as a young man, he was thrown into close association. The 

 centre of much of this social and intellectual life during all this period 

 was " Pine Grove," the well-known home of Reuben H. Walworth, 

 the last of the Chancellors of New ^'ork. " Pine Grove" was always 

 another home for Mr. Putnam while he remained in Saratoga, and 

 Chancellor Walworth a second father. His formal education was lim- 

 ited to the private schools and academies of the village. After the 

 early death of his father, and in order to be with his mother, to whom 

 he was much attached, he relinquished a cherished plan he had formed 

 of securing a higher education at Union College. But from his earliest 

 childhood he supplemented the education derived from schools by the 

 widest range of reading and study, drinking long and deep from the 

 fountains of learning, and reading diligently every book within his 

 reach. For this he had unusual opportunities in the large and well- 

 chosen library of Chancellor Walworth. Though he had come of an 

 ancestry which for countless generations had been landowners or farm- 

 ers, he had no desire to follow in their footsteps, nor indeed to enter 

 into any occui)ation which should not require the constant exercise of 

 his highest intellectual faculties. 



He early developed a strong inclination to pursue a literary career, 

 and wrote much for the local newspapers and periodicals. At this period 

 he founded the "Coterie," a charming literary society of the young peo- 

 ple of the village, several of the members of which afterwards became 

 eminent in literature, law, and politics. Many papers of merit were 

 prepared by the members and read at their meetings. In this practice 

 of writing in his earlier years, supplementing as it did the great fund 

 of knowledge which had been acquired by his constant reading, there 

 was laid the foundation for the clear and polished style which charac- 

 terized all of his writings in after life. 



But, though the call of literature to him was strong and seductive, 

 though he possessed a highly imaginative and poetical mind, and though 

 it cost him a great struggle to turn aside from it, as it did Blackstone 

 and has many another lawyer since, acting under the advice of his life- 

 long friend, Chancellor Walworth, he finally determined to enter the 

 legal profession. He first read law at Saratoga in the office of Beach 

 and Bockes, the senior member of the firm being William A. Beach, sub- 

 sequently a resident of New York City, and one of the most eminent 

 of American advocates ; and the junior member, Augustus Bockes, 

 afterward for forty years a Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, 

 who is still living in honored retirement at Saratoga. He was admitted 



