Putnam patriot., 1926-05-14


 is of a pleasant hotel with comfortable rooms. 1 remember that We sat look ing out upon a public square which was neither more nor less dismal than that of a dozen other lively American towns in which l chance to have spent a night. Either the landlord or the night clerk told us some interesting things about Pomfret, and old Put cave which are in that neighborhood. We were not there, however, to see the villages of Putnam and Pomfret, but to chase up telephone stations in the open country toward Danielson and Moosup, and after sizable and satis- lying breakfast We beat Il down the road. 1t is a fair land. especially in leafy June. We followed a delightful river for several miles. and remem- Der thinking that if one could pick and choose ones place of residence a per manent home on this stream, using Putnam for ones nearby market town, Providence for ones big city, would furnish most agreeable rest ing place for people who like country life in America.
 That association of Putnam with the experiences of beautiful day in early summer in which we were helped rn our photographic work by friendly. ehatty people who turned their homes inside out to accommodate us and who said only good things about the tele- phone, haa caused me after the lapse of years rather Co sympathlze with the editor of the Putnam Patriot ln his resentment of imputations of glum dreariness as characteristic Of Putnam, Conn. Il you landed in there two days after February blizzard quite likely you would find every pros pect dismal and unbeguihng have. however. for twenty years past iH re- trospect pictured Putnam Us a town to which l should like some time to return. and l shouldn't wonder If Lu- ther Shattuck, now sun-burned wheat farmer of the Canadian North west, may remember the place as agreeably as 1. 1 must conjecture that Miss Gilman either had some un- fortunate experience at Putnam or that she never was there.
 In general place complexes make me somewhat tired. All the places l have ever known are interesting, and l am avid of knowing a iot Of other places. l particularly like towns stu ated on rivers: Athel and Orange to eur westward; our Merrimaek river communities; those thriving and pie turesque villages along the Blackstone river south of Worcest ter; Che run sA Fall River: also Putnam on the Qaiu= ebaug and the other mill villages which you encounter as you go south through killingly. Some of these plae. es may be unkempt and scraggly; yet somehow the adjective edreary does not seem to me to apply to them. There rises Co memory as 1 write picture of a gray stone factory just out of Putnam with vines around the NInaoWs aHd an 0utI00k across q frag- rant valley. IL was the kind of place in which, If you must work at loom or spindle, the employment ought to be peasant, tt least ID the Joyous sum mer time.
 In its issue for Sunday, May 8, the following appeared in the Hartford Courant:
 The patriots of Putnam are arous- ed.
 In cold print it has been called "a dreary little town" and it's newspapers 'gossipy weeklies. Not only that but one of its citizens was heard lndiscreet- ly referring to Union Square in Put nam in q parody song of none too com plimentary nature, entitled, When Turnips Grow in Union Square" parody of Henry Van Dykes poem, When Tulips Bloom in Union Square, and another citizen, with the flame of local pride roaring furlously within his patriotic breast, has writ ten to the Patriot" asking for an ex- planation, if possible, of why our humble little village should be refer red to in such unexpected sources, and in such a derogatory manner.
 It seems that the indignant citizen of the letter had noticed in an issue of The Boston Transcript, review of Thyra Samter Wnslow's Show Business by Dorothy F. Gilman, in which the latter had included the fol- lowing ire-inspiring line. Is Il pos sible that these superlatiyely alluring female figures once strolled down the main streets of dreary little towns like Medina, or Putnam, Conn. or San Jose, Cal.?"
 The said indignant citizen also not ed that lin an article in the Survey urapnic for March, 1925, appears this quotation: And there Is the same gossipy reason why the Harlemites read their own weeklies as that which causes the inhabitants of Chelsea, of the Bronx, of Putnam, Conn, or of West Liberty, Ohio, 10 read theirs. !"
 And The Putnam Patriot" ever ready to resent any slur upon the good name of the town. devotes a lead ing editorial, two columns wide, to refutasion of the slanderous charges, ending nonchalantly with the gesture, Putnam is too busy to care.