The Brattleboro Daily Reformer

Where is the olden-time five-cent cigar?
The large ice-cream soda a dime used to buy?
Where is the "Suit, $15"? Where are
The five-dollar shoes that once gladdened the eye,
The fifteen-cent collar, the fifty-cent tie,
The one-dollar shirt we considered a whiz,
The nickel hot dog and the dime piece of pie?
But where is the fifty-cent table d'hote dinner?

In what spot Elysian, aloof and far,
Are beautiful doughnuts they once used to fry
At two for a jitney? In what distant star
Are dollar silk stockings? Where would one apply
For socks at a quarter, or find on the sly,
A two-dollar hat for a saint or a sinner?
The echo comes back from the pitiless sky,
"But where is the fifty-cent table d'hote dinner?"

The prices we meet give a jolt and a jar
To all of our feelings, and glumly we sigh
"O where is the generous chocolate bar
For only five cents? In what limbo now lie
The loud-ticking watch and the pen that ran dry,
But sold for one bone?" We despair and grow thinner
While fate answers dully, with smile all awry,
"But where is the fifty-cent table d'hote dinner?"

Envoy

The high cost of living grows ever more high
We're soaked by the butcher, the baker, the tinher,
And yet we continue to question and cry
"But where is the fifty-cent table d'hote dinner?"

-Berton Braly in Life.