By Pass

"On the beaten road there is tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a path through the impassable." Those for whom the lure of the Big City grows insuperable as the weekend approaches have taken refuge for many years in these words of Carlyle as they sought their way through the tortuous sidestreets of New Haven.

No more. In these days of double-bedded Nash and reinstituted Lincoln Continental, the lot of the itinerant student has been further eased by the completion of the New Haven by-pass. Wilbur Cross to Merritt, Merritt to Wilbur Cross, the agony of transition will now be a few painless moments of tunnels and parkways and scenic beauty.

There is even a rumor abroad that Massachusetts will widen part of the abomination which takes the traveller from Worcester to the state line. A four-lane throughway from here to Gotham is almost in the realm of distant possibility.

And what of New Haven itself, now off the beaten track? Its rutted streets will deteriorate in tranquillity. Its citizens will sleep the suburban sleep. Its institutions will wither and die.