Up, and with my head and heart full of my business, I to my office, and there all the morning, where among other things to my great content Captain Taylor brought me 40l., the greater part of which I shall gain to myself after much care and pains out of his bill of freight, as I have at large set down in my book of Memorandums.
At noon to the ‘Change and there met with Mr. Wood by design, and got out of him to my advantage a condition which I shall make good use of against Sir W. Batten (vide my book of Memorandums touching the contract of masts of Sir W. Warren about which I have had so much trouble).
So home to dinner and then to the Star Tavern hard by to our arbitration of Mr. Bland’s business, and at it a great while, but I found no order like to be kept in our inquiry, and Mr. Clerke, the other arbitrator, one so far from being fit (though able as to his trade of a merchant) to inquire and to take pains in searching out the truth on both sides, that we parted without doing anything, nor do I believe we shall at all ever attain to anything in it.
Then home and till 12 at night making up my accounts with great account of this day’s receipt of Captain Taylor’s money and some money reimbursed me which I have laid out on Field’s business. So home with my mind in pretty good quiet, and to Supper and to bed.
with my heart of a captain
pain is freight I have set down
at noon to the wood
a tract of masts
and the hard land like a merchant
without any receipt
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 16 December 1663.