nd the rest were at the office, so I intended to see them
through the bridge and come back again, but the tide being against us,
when we were almost through we were carried back again with much danger,
and Mrs. Pierce was much afeard and frightened. So I carried them to
the other side and walked to the Beare, and sent them away, and so back
again myself to the office, but finding nobody there I went again to the
Old Swan, and thence by water to the New Exchange, and there found them,
and thence by coach carried my wife to Bowes to buy something, and while
they were there went to Westminster Hall, and there bought Mr. Grant's
book of observations upon the weekly bills of mortality, which appear to
me upon first sight to be very pretty. So back again and took my wife,
calling at my brother Tom's, whom I found full of work, which I am
glad of, and thence at the New Exchange and so home, and I to Sir
W. Batten's, and supped there out of pure hunger and to save getting
anything ready at home, which is a thing I do not nor shall not use to
do. So home and to bed.

26th. Up early. This being, by God's great blessing, the fourth solemn
day of my cutting for the stone this day four years, and am by God's
mercy in very good health, and like to do well, the Lord's name be
praised for it. To the office and Sir G. Carteret's all the morning
about business. At noon come my good guests, Madame Turner, The., and
Cozen Norton, and a gentleman, one Mr. Lewin of the King's Life-Guard;
by the same token he told us of one of his fellows killed this morning
in a duel. I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed
carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first
course; a tanzy

[Tansy (tanacetum), a herb from which puddings were made. Hence any
pudding of the kind. Selden ("Table Talk") says: "Our tansies at
Easter have reference to the bitter herbs." See in Wordsworth's
"University Life in the Eighteenth Century" recipes for "an apple
tansey," "a bean tansey," and "a gooseberry tansey."--M. B.]

and two neats' tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all
the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolette. In
the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content
and my wife walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and
to bed. We had a man-cook to dress dinner to-day, and sent for Jane to
help us, and my wife and she agre