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Up, left my wife and to the office, and there to my great content Sir W. Warren come to me to settle the business of the Tangier boates, wherein I shall get above 100l., besides 100l. which he gives me in the paying for them out of his owne purse. He gone, I home to my lodgings to dinner, and there comes Captain Wagers newly returned from the Streights, who puts me in great fear for our last ships that went to Tangier with provisions, that they will be taken. A brave, stout fellow this Captain is, and I think very honest.
To the office again after dinner and there late writing letters, and then about 8 at night set out from my office and fitting myself at my lodgings intended to have gone this night in a Ketch down to the Fleete, but calling in my way at Sir J. Minnes’s, who is come up from Erith about something about the prizes, they persuaded me not to go till the morning, it being a horrible darke and a windy night.
So I back to my lodging and to bed.

left my wife
and off to war

I shall return with visions
that will nest in the night

calling me up from
a horrible dark bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 2 November 1665.

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