The opening paragraph shows Washington's real and lasting estimate of his former comrade in adversity, and is as follows: Your favor of the 20th of May I received with much pleasure.

For I can assure you that among the many worthy and meritorious officers with whom I have had the happiness to be connected in service throughout this war, and from whom I have had cheerful assistance in the various and trying vicissitudes of a complicated contest, the name of a Putnam is not forgotten; nor will it be but with that stroke of time which shall obliterate from my mind the remembrance of all those toils and fatigues through which we have struggled for the preservation and establishment of the Rights, Liberties, and Independence of our Country.
It was not like Old Put to give up the fight so long as life held out, and by the exercise of his iron will he kept up and about for years.
Within less than a twelvemonth from having been disqualified from service on account of his affliction, he paid a visit to his former command on the lower Hudson, where one of his old friends, General Greene, complains, in a letter, that he is "talking as usual, and telling his old stories." It can not be denied that he was somewhat loquacious, especially in his later years, and those "old stories" were not alone his solace, but the delight of numerous audiences of admiring friends and neighbors.

At Major Humphreys's request he retold them, two or three years before he died (1788) and they form the basis of his first biographical memoir.
But they were doubtless very stale to those of his hearers who had listened to them again and again, as plainly intimated by General Greene.
As they were mainly about himself and his exploits, and as many of them were of events that happened in the distant past, it is not unlikely that some of them were slightly exaggerated, to say the least.

Some others told of Old Put and his doings are perhaps not entitled to credence.

Among these latter may be the tales of his dueling days, as, for instance, the story of his challenge by an English officer on parole, who, when he came to the place appointed, found Old Put seated near what appeared to be a keg of powder, serenely smoking his pipe.