THE TURNPIKE. 2$ 



What strange ideas those old fellows had of 

 road building. The engineers of their day, if 

 engineers there were, were impressed with the 

 conviction that a turnpike should be built in 

 an absolutely straight line, no matter what ob- 

 stacles there might be in the way. It never 

 occurred to them that a fly could crawl around 

 an orange with less effort than he would make 

 in crawling over it, and that the distance would 

 be the same. If the spire of the Strasbourg 

 Cathedral had stood in their way, they would 

 not have budged one inch to the right or to the 

 left. Like ancient mariners before great circle 

 sailing was adopted, they fully believed that 

 from east to west was a direct course, and in 

 trying to establish the mathematical axiom 

 that a straight line forms the shortest connec- 

 tion between two given points, they really 

 succeeded in demonstrating its falsity. 



People who travel by rail through the new 

 and prosperous towns that border the line be- 

 tween New Haven and Hartford can form no 

 idea of the contrast presented by the old route. 

 Two distinct phases of civilization are apparent. 

 Much has been said lately in the newspapers 

 of the decay of religious observances in New 

 England. This is true of places where the new 



