backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a
very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all."

At a change of scenes, Mrs. Knipp spies Pepys and comes to the pit door. He
goes with her to the tiring-room. "To the women's shift," he writes,
"where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty,
prettier than I thought.... But to see how Nell cursed for having so few
people in the pit, was pretty."--"But Lord! their confidence! and how
many men do hover about them as soon as they come off the stage, and how
confident they are in their talk!" Or he is whispered a bit of gossip, how
Castlemaine is much in love with Hart, an actor of the house. Then Pepys
goes back into the pit and lays out a sixpence for an orange. As the play
nears its end, footmen crowd forward at the doors. The epilogue is spoken.
The fiddles squeak their last. There is a bawling outside for coaches.

"Would it fit your humor," asks Mr. Pepys, when we have been handed to our
seats, "would it fit your humor, if we go around to the Rose Tavern for
some burnt wine and a breast of mutton off the spit? It's sure that some
brave company will fall in, and we can have a tune. We'll not heed the
bellman. We'll sit late, for it will be a fine light moonshine morning."

To an Unknown Reader

Once in a while I dream that I come upon a person who is reading a book
that I have written. In my pleasant dreams these persons do not nod
sleepily upon my pages, and sometimes I fall in talk with them. Although
they do not know who I am, they praise the book and name me warmly among
my betters. In such circumstance my happy nightmare mounts until I ride
foremost with the giants. If I could think that this disturbance of my
sleep came from my diet and that these agreeable persons arose from a
lobster or a pie, nightly at supper I would ply my fork recklessly among
the platters.

But in a waking state these meetings never come. If an article of mine is
ever read at all, it is read in secret like the Bible. Once, indeed, in a
friend's house I saw my book upon the table, but I suspect that it had been
dusted and laid out for my coming. I request my hostess that next time, for
my vanity, she lay the book face down upon a chair, as though the grocer's
knock intruded. Or perhaps a huckster's cart broke upon her enjoyment.
Let it be thought that a rare bargain--tender asparagus or the first
strawberries of the summer--