y friend that require haste. He
being gone I to my office all the evening, doing business there till
bedtime, it being now my manner since my wife is come to spend too much
of my daytime with her and the workmen and do my office business at
night, which must not be after the work of the house is done. This night
late I had notice that Dekins, the merchant, is dead this afternoon
suddenly, for grief that his daughter, my Morena, who has long been ill,
is given over by the Doctors. For both which I am very sorry. So home
and to bed.

4th. To my office all the morning, after I was up (my wife beginning to
make me lie long a mornings), where we sat till noon, and then dined at
home, and after a little with my workmen to my office till 9 at night,
among other things examining the particulars of the miscarriage of
the Satisfaction, sunk the other day on the Dutch coast through the
negligence of the pilott.

5th (Lord's day). Lay long in bed talking with my wife, and among other
things fell out about my maid Sarah, whom my wife would fain put away,
when I think her as good a servant as ever came into a house, but it
seems my wife would have one that would dress a head well, but we were
friends at last. I to church; and this day the parson has got one to
read with a surplice on. I suppose himself will take it up hereafter,
for a cunning fellow he is as any of his coat. Dined with my wife, and
then to talk again above, chiefly about her learning to dance against
her going next year into the country, which I am willing she shall do.
Then to church to a tedious sermon, and thence walked to Tom's to see
how things are in his absence in the country, and so home and in my
wife's chamber till bedtime talking, and then to my office to put things
in order to wait on the Duke to-morrow morning, and so home and to bed.

6th. Sir W. Pen and I early to St. James's by water, where Mr. Coventry,
finding the Duke in bed, and not very well, we did not stay to speak
with him, but to White Hall, and there took boat and down to Woolwich we
went. In our way Mr. Coventry telling us how of late upon enquiry into
the miscarriages of the Duke's family, Mr. Biggs, his steward, is
found very faulty, and is turned out of his employment. Then we fell
to reading of a book which I saw the other day at my Lord Sandwich's,
intended for the late King, finely bound up, a treatise concerning the
benefit the Hollanders make of our fishing, but whereas I expected