Stranger here myself

At the office about this estimate and so with my wife and Sir W. Pen to see our pictures, which do not much displease us, and so back again, and I staid at the Mitre, whither I had invited all my old acquaintance of the Exchequer to a good chine of beef, which with three barrels of oysters and three pullets, and plenty of wine and mirth, was our dinner, and there was about twelve of us, among others Mr. Bowyer, the old man, and Mr. Faulconberge, Shadwell, Taylor, Spicer, Woodruffe (who by reason of some friend that dined with him came to us after dinner), Servington, &c, and here I made them a foolish promise to give them one this day twelvemonth, and so for ever while I live, but I do not intend it. Here I staid as long as I could keep them, and so home to Sir W. Pen, who with his children and my wife has been at a play to-day and saw “D’Ambois,” which I never saw. Here we staid late at supper and playing at cards, and so home and to bed.

Our pictures
do not please us

and so again
my acquaintance I made

and so I live
as long as a child

never playing
at home.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 30 December 1661.

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