Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1875 — “Green Boys.” [ARTICLE]

“Green Boys.”

We have seen a lot of city or village boys gather around a boy from the back country and make fun of him, and talk about his “ greenness,” because he was; not up to all their ways of acting, and very often ways of mischief. And very often the country boy feels chagrined about it and goes home quite sad. Yesterday we were having a chat with some city boys, sons of wealthy parents, and in our conversation the word buckwheat was mentioned. We asked the boys when it was sown, how the plants looked, how they got the buckwheat flour out of it which makes their nice morning’s “flatjacks”—or “ flap-jacks,” as some call them. Our country friends would have laughed at the answers. One large boy said they sowed buckwheat in the fall and cut it the next summer, he believed. Another said he supposed they sowed it the same as any wheat, and cut it and ground it the same, and he supposed it was only so called because it was a kind first Raised by a Mr. Buck. None of these boys could tell anything about the-gppearsmee of the plant or grain—though one thought it looked more like oats than like wheat. (They had all seen oats fed to horses and seen wheat at the city grist-mill.) Now, were not these boys just as “ green” as any country lad that ever visited the city? The truth is, city boys are fully as “green” about things in the country as country are about things in the city, and the country boys have the advantage of knowing less about mischief. It’s all nonsense tor city boys to put on airs and laugh at country boys, for the latter know a great many usetul things which the former do not know, and if one of each class should be left a homeless, friendless orphan, the farmer boy, with his strong frame, his practical skill and self-reliance, would stand the best chance of taking care of himself. Let the city boy and the country boy each have a mutual respect for what the oiher knows that he himself does not know—and remember that one is just as “ green” as the other when he gets inio the other’s territory. By the way, we know of a city boy who'is collecting a cabinet of all kinds of grains and seeds used in agriculture and horticulture, and is studying the habits of the plants. That boy will not be so “ green” when he goes out to see his country friends. This is a good example for many other city boys. American Agriculturist.