Up, and to the office and there all the morning sitting and at noon to dinner with my Lord Bruncker, Sir W. Batten and Sir W. Pen at the White Horse in Lumbard Streete, where, God forgive us! good sport with Captain Cocke’s having his mayde sicke of the plague a day or two ago and sent to the pest house, where she now is, but he will not say anything but that she is well. But blessed be God! a good Bill this week we have; being but 237 in all, and 42 of the plague, and of them but six in the City: though my Lord Bruncker says, that these six are most of them in new parishes where they were not the last week. Here was with us also Mr. Williamson, who the more I know, the more I honour.
Hence I slipt after dinner without notice home and there close to my business at my office till twelve at night, having with great comfort returned to my business by some fresh vowes in addition to my former, and more severe, and a great joy it is to me to see myself in a good disposition to business.
So home to supper and to my Journall and to bed.
noon with a white horse and house of plague
here I am
the more I know the more I notice
till twelve at night
having turned
into myself
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 1 March 1666.