Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1901 — TOWN BOYS THE "FARMERS." [ARTICLE]

TOWN BOYS THE "FARMERS."

Far Less Quick and Observant than the Country Children. Principal Thomas W. Boyce of the First District school, is of the belief that city children are the real “farmers,” in the matter of observation. The country cousin has long been scoffed at for his open-mouthed wonder at what to his city-bred playmates are objects of every-day knowledge, and .plenty have been the jokes sprung at the expense of the country gawk upon his visits to the city. But now the tables are turned and the city boys and girls may well look out for their laurels as world-wise youngsters. * "We have been reading -Snow Bound' in our eighth grade recently,” .said Mr. Boyce, “and It is a matter of surprise and wonderment to note how little the children know about farm life and nature. Some passages which one would think every intelligent boy or girl of 14 or 15 years of age ought to know leave a perfect blank in the minds of the city scholars. “Take, for instance, the passage, ‘The oxen hooked, and lashed their tails.’ The scholars could not imagine what ‘hooked’ meant. They thought that •the word hook meant to snatch, to steal, to grab, to swipe, but not one associate! the word with the tossing of the horns of the impatient brutes. The passage describing the well sweep ‘like Pisa's leaning miracle' was so much Greek to them. Although they understood the reference to the leaning towerof Pisa, they knew nothing of tfie old-fashioned well sweep. ‘The sun-cir-cled day, porteht of the storm,’ they had never seen. They expostulated at believing such a thing. ‘You cannot look at the sun,’ they said. ‘lt is too bright. It hurts your eyes.’ “Now. I venture to say that there is not a boy in this State who has lived on a farm to whom the sun-circled day is not the portent of a storm. They have noticed it from their childhood days. The city children were nonplussed in reading of the gray banks of clouds with the rising of the sun. The sun they see is over the housetops, through some dining room window-. It is an interesting study for me to observe how little the city people are taught to observe nature. That is where the country children have the advantage over their city cousins."— Milwaukee Sentinel.