Kindergarten lesson

(Lord’s day). Up before 5 o’clock and alone at setting my Brampton papers to rights according to my father’s and my computation and resolution the other day to my good content, I finding that there will be clear saved to us 50l. per annum, only a debt of it may be 100l.
So made myself ready and to church, where Sir W. Pen showed me the young lady which young Dawes, that sits in the new corner-pew in the church, hath stole away from Sir Andrew Rickard, her guardian, worth 1000l. per annum present, good land, and some money, and a very well-bred and handsome lady: he, I doubt, but a simple fellow. However, he got this good luck to get her, which methinks I could envy him with all my heart. Home to dinner with my wife, who not being very well did not dress herself but staid at home all day, and so I to church in the afternoon and so home again, and up to teach Ashwell the grounds of time and other things on the tryangle, and made her take out a Psalm very well, she having a good ear and hand. And so a while to my office, and then home to supper and prayers, to bed, my wife and I having a little falling out because I would not leave my discourse below with her and Ashwell to go up and talk with her alone upon something she has to say. She reproached me but I had rather talk with any body than her, by which I find I think she is jealous of my freedom with Ashwell, which I must avoid giving occasion of.

a paper heart to teach
the rounds of a triangle

her good hand falling
on a roach


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 3 May 1663.

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