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- no Kaiser are you; you are nought but an onion.
- I'm going to peel you now, my good Peer!
- You won't escape either by begging or howling.
- [Takes an onion and pulls off layer after layer.]
- 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.
- The next one looks like a crown;-oh, thanks!
- we'll throw it away without more ado.
- Here's the archaeologist, short but sturdy;
- and here is the Prophet, juicy and fresh.
- He stinks, as the Scripture has it, of lies,
- enough to bring the water to an honest man's eyes.
- This layer that rolls itself softly together
- is the gentleman, living in ease and good cheer.
- The next one seems sick. There are black streaks upon it;-
- black symbolises both parsons and niggers.
- [Pulls off several layers at once.]
- What an enormous number of swathings!
- Isn't the kernel soon coming to light?
- [Pulls the whole onion to pieces.]
- I'm blest if it is! To the innermost centre,
- it's nothing but swathings-each smaller and smaller.-
- Nature is witty!
- [Throws the fragments away.]
- The devil take brooding!
- If one goes about thinking, one's apt to stumble.
