He
gazed with a disdainful pleasure at the receding shore, and closed his
eyes,--to turn his back fairly and forever on the Chew-Sins and the
Wu-Wangs,--to let the Hang dynasty go hang,--to shut out from all
but future fireside-tales the thought of varnish-trees, soap-trees,
tallow-trees, wax-trees, and litchi,--never more to look on the land of
the rhinoceros, the camel, the elephant, and the ape,--on the girls with
thick, protuberant lips, copper skins, and lanky, black hair,--on the
corpulent gentry with their long talons, and madams tottering on their
hoofs, reminding him constantly of the animal kingdom, as figured to
imagination in childhood, of the rat that wanted his long tail again, or
of the horse that will never win a race,--on the land of lanterns and
lying, of silver pheasants and--of scamps.
The faster the good ship sailed, the stronger the east-wind blew,
the swifter ran the life-current in the veins of the returning
exile,--friend, countryman, lover.
As the vessel neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze
brought to his eager nostrils the odors of his native orchards, or the
aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all
his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his
veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and
rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations.
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