Above the river

Up betimes and settled some necessary papers relating to my security in the accounts which I lately passed with my Lord Sandwich; then to the office and there all the morning sitting. So home to dinner and then abroad with my wife by water to Westminster, and there left her at my Lord’s lodgings, talking with Mrs. Harper about her kinswoman’s coming to my wife next week. And I to Jervas the barber’s, and there was trimmed, and did deliver back a periwigg, which he brought by my desire the other day to show me, having some thoughts, though no great desire or resolution yet to wear one, and so I put it off for a while.
Thence to my wife, and calling at both the Exchanges, buying stockings for her and myself, and also at Leadenhall, where she and I, it being candlelight, bought meat for to-morrow, having never a mayde to do it, and I myself bought, while my wife was gone to another shop, a leg of beef, a good one, for six pense, and my wife says is worth my money. So walked home, with a woman carrying our things, and had a very pleasant walk from White-hall home. So to my office and there despatched some business; and so home and to supper and to bed.
We called at Toms as we came by, and saw his new building, which will be very convenient. But I am mightily displeased at a letter he sent me last night, to borrow 20l. more of me, and yet gives me no account, as I have long desired, how matters stand with him in the world. I am troubled also to see how, contrary to my expectation, my brother John neither is the scholler nor minds his studies as I thought would have done, but loiters away his time, so that I must send him soon to Cambridge again.

thoughts wear off
light as thin ice

give no account how matters
stand in the world

how other minds
would loiter on a bridge


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 29 August 1663.

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