le
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 agreed at L3 a year (she would not serve
under) till both could be better provided, and so she stays with us, and
I hope we shall do well if poor Sarah were but rid of her ague.

27th. Early Sir G. Carteret, both Sir Williams and I by coach to
Deptford, it being very windy and rainy weather, taking a codd and some
prawnes in Fish Street with us. We settled to pay the Guernsey, a small
ship, but come to a great deal of money, it having been unpaid ever
since before the King came in, by which means not only the King pays
wages while the ship has lain still,