to the office, where I settled to do much
business to-day. By and by sent for to Sir G. Carteret to discourse of
the business of the Navy, and our wants, and the best way of bestowing
the little money we have, which is about L30,000, but, God knows, we
have need of ten times as much, which do make my life uncomfortable,
I confess, on the King's behalf, though it is well enough as to my own
particular, but the King's service is undone by it. Having done with
him, back again to the office, and in the streets, in Mark Lane, I do
observe, it being St. David's day, the picture of a man dressed like a
Welchman, hanging by the neck upon one of the poles that stand out at
the top of one of the merchants' houses, in full proportion, and very
handsomely done; which is one of the oddest sights I have seen a good
while, for it was so like a man that one would have thought it was
indeed a man.

[From "Poor Robin's Almanack" for 1757 it appears that, in former
times in England, a Welshman was burnt in effigy on this
anniversary. Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, in his edition of Brand's "Popular
Antiquities," adds "The practice to which Pepys refers... was
very common at one time; and till very lately bakers made
gingerbread Welshmen, called taffies, on St. David's day, which were
made to represent a man skewered" (vol. i., pp. 60,61).]

Being returned home, I find Greeting, the flageolet-master, come, and
teaching my wife; and I do think my wife will take pleasure in it, and
it will be easy for her, and pleasant. So I, as I am well content with
the charge it will occasion me. So to the office till dinner-time, and
then home to dinner, and before dinner making my wife to sing. Poor
wretch! her ear is so bad that it made me angry, till the poor wretch
cried to see me so vexed at her, that I think I shall not discourage her
so much again, but will endeavour to make her understand sounds, and do
her good that way; for she hath a great mind to learn, only to please
me; and, therefore, I am mighty unjust to her in discouraging her so
much, but we were good friends, and to dinner, and had she not been ill
with those and that it were not Friday (on which in Lent there are no
plays) I had carried her to a play, but she not being fit to go abroad,
I to the office, where all the afternoon close examining the collection
of my papers of the accounts of the Navy since this war to my great
content, and so at night home to