You won’t escape either by begging or howling.
[Takes an onion and strips off one coat after another.
There lies the outermost layer, all torn;
That’s the shipwrecked man on the jolly-boat’s keel.
Here’s the passenger layer, scanty and thin;—
And yet in its taste there’s a tang of Peer Gynt.
Next underneath is the gold-digger ego;
The juice is all gone—if it ever had any.
This coarse-grained layer with the hardened skin
Is the peltry hunter by Hudson’s Bay.