It is related that at one of the evening meetings one of his fellow worshipers aroused him, by expressing his own conviction that any person who had ever used profane language could hardly be considered a model Christian.

Old Put at once accepted the reproof as intended, for it was well known that in moments of excitement, when carried away by the furore of battle, he had often used words which he would not care to review in print.

He detested a coward, and when he met one in retreat he did not hesitate to employ strong language in expressing his opinion.

At Horseneck, declared the only witness of his reckless ride down the hill, "Old Put was cursing the British terribly." There was no evading his friend's pointed remarks, so the honest old man rose from his seat and "confessed the failing which he had finally overcome"; but he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "it was enough to make an angel swear at Bunker Hill to see the rascals run away from the British!"[4] [Footnote 4: Livingston's Life of Israel Putnam.

An exhaustive work, by a conscientious and painstaking author.] In this respect he was no worse than his former Commander-in-Chief, though he may have been oftener culpable, being so much more excitable than the phlegmatic Washington.
The final summons came on Saturday, the twenty-ninth of May, 1790, when, in a lower room of the house he had built nearly fifty years before, the battle-scarred warrior, life's fitful fever ended, passed peacefully away to his rest.
Israel Putnam was well prepared to die, declared his pastor in his funeral sermon, and perfectly resigned to the will of God.
"He had been for years," says Major Humphreys, "in patient yet fearless expectation of the approach of the King of Terrors, whom he had full often faced on the field of blood." On the first day of June the earthly remains of Israel Putnam, attended by a distinguished company of former comrades and sorrowing friends, were taken to the Brooklyn burying-ground, and placed in a brick tomb.
Upon the slab of the tomb was carved the lengthy epitaph, printed on the next page, as composed by Dr.Timothy Dwight, Putnam's former friend and chaplain in the army, who subsequently became President of Yale College.
[Illustration: Statue to General Putnam at Brooklyn, Connecticut.] To the memory of Israel Putnam, Esquire, Senior Major-General in the Armies of The United States of America Who Was born at Salem In the Province of Massachusetts On the seventh day of January AD.