With renewed hope, therefore, he again approached those
who sit in easy-chairs, and concealing his identity (for they are
stiff at bending, and when once a picture-maker is classed as "of no
good" he remains so to the end, in spite of change), he succeeded in
getting entrusted with a story by the elegant and refined Kyen Tal.
This writer, as he remembered with distrust, confines his
distinguished efforts entirely to the doings of sailors and of those
connected with the sea, and this tale, indeed, he found upon reading
to be the narrative of how a Hang-Chow junk and its crew, consisting
mostly of aged persons, were beguiled out of their course by an
exceedingly ill-disposed dragon, and wrecked upon an island of naked
barbarians. It was, therefore, with a somewhat heavy stomach that this
person set himself the task of arranging his five characters as so to
illustrate the words of the story.
The sayings of the ancient philosopher Tai Loo are indeed very subtle,
and the truth of his remark, "After being disturbed in one's dignity
by a mandarin's foot it is no unusual occurrence to fall flat on the
face in crossing a muddy street," was now apparent.
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