Remember when I was bumming around Chelsea on the purple hearts! The chicks there thought I was God's gift to their little bohemia. A real devil. ‘I'm pilled to the gills,’ I'd tell them and their little eyes would grow as big as plates.

So looks the Shakespearean who is confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailed by a flat-earth fanatic.

one that […] must raise a sconce by the highway and sell switches

Could I forsee the sunken rocks of life?