Norwich bulletin., 1918-01-04
THE SHORT CUT AFTER A coMPLETE.cU

THE SHORT CUT AFT Written Specially for The Bulletin, ,
 were great critters, we humans, for wanting to. take short cuts. Short cuts between places; short cuts. between people; short cuts between objects; short cuts to attainment.
 "Is this the road to BungtoWn!" Then let's cut 'croSs lots and see IL we can't get there sooner.
 'Is this the way to wealth ?" Then let's try some "get-rich- quick" scheme and beat the other fellow.
 'fIs this the way to raise potatoes?'' Then let's try some easier and quicker method, and save work.
 Now, if there is any thing surer than another it is that there is no royal road to learning.
 If there is one thing more unde- niabfe than any other it is that riches have got to be paid for, to the last cent, in some sort of quid pro quo.
 If there is one saying which is more often quoted than another it is the old one that "the longest way round IS sometimes the shortest way there
 Once, as a very small boy, my father let me ride, to a neighbor's with him behind "Old Doll" the sorrel mare who in those days supplemented the farm OK team. Coming to place where the road forked, Father turned to the left and drove around a comparatively level road. After quarter of mile or so, noticed that the road which turned to the right and which he had avoided came out into ours over the top of steep hill. Also noticed that it was almost straight between the two points of meeting, while the one we had taken curved broadly around the base of the hill. To my eyes it, the uphill and doWn-hill road, was much the shorter of the two. So l asked Father why he didn't come that way. With little smile he responded: Its just as far over the bail of a kettle standing up as it is around the bail lying down."
 It took my small boys mind some time to grasp the real significance of this answer. Indeed, not till we came back and--I suppose to give me an object lesson-deliberately took the other road and went over the big hill. did fully comprehend it.,
 While the hill road, if shown on a 1 map, would have been seen to go al most straight from ,.one fork to the | other. when we came to drive. it, we found that it went up and up and then down and down, till the curve it made | into the air almost equalled the curve the other branch made around the hill Furthermore, we could trot the old mare all the, way around the lower road, while she. had to walk all the way up one steep hill, because it would have winded her to trot up it, and she also had to walk all the way down the other side, because her poor foundered fore feet made it unwise to invite stumbling. It very evidently took ue longer and also took more out of the horse to go ''the short way over' than it had to go "the long way round" l Somehow, that little practical lessor in applied efficiency made a great i'm pression on my young mind. Ever since that day. when some enthusiastic
 schemer has been setting. forth ir ] glowing words and rosy colors the ad vantage of this that or the other tricf 1 for insuring a short cut to success Pve inyoluntarily kept asking mysel if the bail of his particular kettle wal any shorter standing upright than |
 vas lying down.
 t I've made my full share of mistake! in life, and wasted my full share 0 opportunity But I know that I havt bbeen saved from two or three "a, | trips by remembering that long pas
 summer day on the dusty Nassau tur1 II pike and the two forks of the road $.
 the steep hill.
 But we can't, all of us, nor any C
 us all the time, be wise, Sometime
 it seems to me as if this anxiety |, hunt up short cuts and easy going wa just as common among farmers and il
 farm operations as anywhere else ol earth. Nor does it seem to make muci difference how often we've been taugh by failure that 1t doesn't pay: we'r constantly tempted to try it just one more.' Not usually the same identica 'short cut but some other on som other road.
 l remember once, at farmers in
 stitutet where one of the instructor was a market gardener of high repI tation. l asked him if there was on way, in our short seasons, to haste, 1
 melons, etc. He answered fiuensl
 that there was. The thing to do. h
 explained, was to plant the seeds O
 inverted sod, in hotbed or col
 frame, as early as it was made. Tn
 seeds would germinate quickly, gro1
 rapidly, be protected from frosts b
 the glass, and could be transplante
 as thrifty growing hills as early as
 was safe to plant seeds in normalf
 prepared outdoor plats. Growing i sod, the whole thing could be change from cold frame to outdoor hill with out any disturbance of the roots. The ! would never know they'd been trans
 planted, and would keep right 0
 growing and would astonish one b the earliness of their fruiting.
 Well, sods aren't easy to get off
 solidly frozen landscape at the tim
 I'm ordinarily making a liotbed or col
 frame. l couldn't get any that sprins 50 l took two eight-inch wide board
 set on them three shallow pasteboar boxes from which both top and botto1
 had been cut, filled the boxes wit
 rich dkft and planted my melon seed
 in them at one end of the glass -covere
 bed. This, made it possible to slic
 each little hill off the board into ii prepared growing place, without dis
 turbance of the soil or the rootlet
 That fall I saved some sods befor
 the ground froze. kept them in tf cellar all winter and used them if ! next spring. Both years set my coi , frame coddled melons out in the
 regular bed the same day I planted Il,
 seeds in the ordinary course (fayin a cover handy by each transpFante