nted that they proved of small avail.

To Putnam, then, and not to Ward, the officers and men of the assembled
militia looked for advice and encouragement. They were quite naturally
doubtful as to the result of their hasty action, and as most of them had
never been under fire they were timid and even down-hearted. But Putnam
was continually engaged in arousing both their patriotism and their
hopes. When General Warren asked him (wrote Putnam's son Daniel, many
years later) "if 10,000 British troops should march out of Boston, what
number, in his opinion, would be competent to meet them, the answer was,
'Let me pick my officers, and I would not fear to meet them with half
that number--not in a pitched battle, to stop them at once, for no
troops are better than the British--but I would fight on the retreat,
and every wall we passed should be lined with the dead!'"

"Our men," the General said on another occasion, "would always follow
wherever their officers led--I know this to have been the case with
mine, and have also seen it in other instances." And as Putnam's record
had long since proved that he always led, and asked no man to approach
nearer the foe than he himself was willing to go, the soldiers were
enthusiastic for "Old Wolf Put," the fighter, though lukewarm in their
feelings toward the commander.

They did not admire the methods Putnam employed to keep them out of
mischief--these raw and undisciplined militia, accustomed to do as they
liked and to take orders from no man--for he kept them actively employed
all the time. "It is better to dig a ditch every morning, and fill it up
at evening, than to have the men idle," said Old Put, and though the men
grumbled the results soon showed that he was right.

What they also needed more than anything else was confidence, and, in
order to inspire that, he paraded some two thousand of them through
Charlestown over the hills soon to become world-famous, and right in
sight of the enemy. He did this several times, and on one occasion took
with him his son Daniel, who wrote of it afterward: "I felt proud to be
numbered among what I then thought to be a mighty host destined for some
great enterprise."

Daniel was then only fifteen years of age, yet he performed a man's
work, proving himself worthy of his parentage, and was his father's
aide-de-camp and companion. During the progress of the battle at Bunker
Hill he acted as the guard and defender of a British refugee's wife