re meeting with Mr.
How, Goodgroom, and young Coleman, did drink and talk with them, and
I have almost found out a young gentlewoman for my turn, to wait on my
wife, of good family and that can sing. Thence I went away, and
getting a coach went home and sat late talking with my wife about our
entertaining Dr. Clerke's lady and Mrs. Pierce shortly, being in great
pain that my wife hath never a winter gown, being almost ashamed of
it, that she should be seen in a taffeta one; when all the world wears
moyre;--[By moyre is meant mohair.-B.]--so to prayers and to bed, but
we could not come to any resolution what to do therein, other than to
appear as she is.

30th. Up and to the office, whither Sir W. Pen came, the first time that
he has come downstairs since his late great sickness of the gout. We
with Mr. Coventry sat till noon, then I to the Change ward, to see what
play was there, but I liked none of them, and so homeward, and calling
in at Mr. Rawlinson's, where he stopped me to dine with him and two East
India officers of ships and Howell our turner. With the officers I had
good discourse, particularly of the people at the Cape of Good Hope, of
whom they of their own knowledge do tell me these one or two things: viz
.... that they never sleep lying, but always sitting upon the ground,
that their speech is not so articulate as ours, but yet [they]
understand one another well, that they paint themselves all over with
the grease the Dutch sell them (who have a fort there) and soot. After
dinner drinking five or six glasses of wine, which liberty I now take
till I begin my oath again, I went home and took my wife into coach, and
carried her to Westminster; there visited Mrs. Ferrer, and staid talking
with her a good while, there being a little, proud, ugly, talking lady
there, that was much crying up the Queen-Mother's Court at Somerset
House above our own Queen's; there being before no allowance of laughing
and the mirth that is at the other's; and indeed it is observed that
the greatest Court now-a-days is there. Thence to White Hall, where I
carried my wife to see the Queen in her presence-chamber; and the maydes
of honour and the young Duke of Monmouth playing at cards. Some of
them, and but a few, were very pretty; though all well dressed in velvet
gowns. Thence to my Lord's lodgings, where Mrs. Sarah did make us my
Lord's bed, and Mr. Creed I being sent for, sat playing at cards till it
was late, and so good night, a