(With apologies to the estate of Elizabeth Akers Allen.)
Downward, come downward, O Cost in your flight,
Soaring like Paulhan or W. Wright!
Prices, come down from the limitless sky,
Down to the reach of the Ultimate Guy.
Once you were not quite so far from the ground;
Once we had lamb chops at 10c. a pound.
Give us the days ere the cost took a leap,
When things were cheap, mother, when they were cheap.
Backward, flow backward, O Living's Advance,
Back from the purlieus of Airy Romance!
Back to the days when a porterhouse steak
Didn't cost half of what people could make!
Back to the days when a regular egg
Didn't drive people to borrow and beg!
Oh, for the days when the hog and the sheep
Were not as diamonds—when they were cheap.
Speaking of Hunting
When a button rolls under the bureau
The search is a woeful affair;
And the humorous weekly describes it but meekly
In saying the hunter will swear.
But what is that limited anger?
The impotent rage of a cub!
I only grow what you could really call hot
When the soap slips under the tub.
I've sought through a time-table's mazes,
And sworn at the men who devise
That scare and delusion of hopeless confusion,
That intricate bundle of lies.
But never a hunt that was harder,
Be you or professor or dub,
Than that ill-fated jest—I refer to the quest—
When the soap falls back of the tub
My paste pot escapes almost daily;
My scissors I never can find;
And I am the rotter who loses a blotter
More often than if he were blind.
But sooner a myriad searches
Than go to the worry and troub.
That one little cake saponaceous can make
When the soap slips under the tub—
Blank! Blank!
When the soap slips under the tub.
The Flat-Hunter's Way
We don't get any too much light;
It's pretty noisy, too, at that;
The folks next door stay up all night;
There's but one closet in the flat;
The rent we pay is far from low;
Our flat is small and in the rear;
But we have looked around, and so
We think we'll stay another year.