Set any group of adults talking about the good old days and it will not be long before someone brings up the subject of inflation. The good old days, apparently, were the days when a dollar was worth a dollar, and the general decline in everything from moral standards to sartorial respectability can be measured by the decline in the dollar’s power to purchase. If the adults engaged in the discussion date back any distance at all, each one will have his own little story to show inflation’s tragic ravages.

As a matter of fact, I have my own inflation story, and propose to tell it now.

Away back in the early years of the present century, when I was a good five years old, my older brother and I were walking down the village street one summer afternoon when we found a nice, shiny twenty-five-cent piece lying on the sidewalk.

This represented unimaginable wealth. Pocket money we never had. We legged it down the road to the resort town of Beulah, three quarters of a mile away, where moneyed gentlemen like ourselves could find things worth buying.

Our first port of call, of course, was the soda fountain, where each one of us had a tall, chocolate ice-cream soda. This was a once-a-year delicacy, at best, always enjoyed through the bounty of some grownup; here we were, on our own, spending five cents apiece with all the abandon of Coal Oil Johnny himself. When the last drops went noisily up the straws and down our throats, we still had fifteen cents.

We strolled about, enjoying the sensation of being wholly solvent. To help ourselves enjoy it, we bought a five-cent box of Cracker Jack, which I recall as a sort of popcorn-and-molasses confection, and ate it to the final fragment as we walked. Then it occurred to us to go to the candy store, where after long discussion we invested five cents in chocolate drops. (I suppose that is what they were called; or maybe, by stretching the words’ meaning a bit, they were called chocolate creams; they were big, with firm white centers and a slick chocolate coating, and they came three for a penny.) For a nickel one got quite a sackful, and we took ours and went and sat on a dock and ate them all.

Down to the last nickel, now. By unani mous consent we bought a package of chewing gum. This meant that we were stocked up for a long time to come. You never threw away a used stick of chewing gum in those days; you fastened it in some safe place—the underside of a chair or table was best—and next day you brought it out and started all over again. That final nickel was wisely spent.

If I were inventing this, I would make a moral tale of it by reciting that we both