much, and
tells me the mighty use of Napier's bones;

[John Napier or Neper (1550-1617), laird of Merchiston (now
swallowed up in the enlarged Edinburgh of to-day, although the old
castle still stands), and the inventor of logarithms. He published
his "Rabdologiae seu numerationis per virgulas libri duo" in 1617,
and the work was reprinted and translated into Italian (1623) and
Dutch (1626). In 1667 William Leybourn published "The Art of
Numbering by Speaking Rods, vulgarly termed Napier's Bones."]

so that I will have a pair presently. To the office, where busy all
the morning sitting, and at noon home to dinner, and then with my wife
abroad to the King's playhouse, to shew her yesterday's new play, which
I like as I did yesterday, the principal thing extraordinary being the
dance, which is very good. So to Charing Cross by coach, about my wife's
business, and then home round by London Wall, it being very dark and
dirty, and so to supper, and, for the ease of my eyes, to bed, having
first ended all my letters at the office.

27th. Up, and to the office, where very busy all the morning. While I
was busy at the Office, my wife sends for me to come home, and what was
it but to see the pretty girl which she is taking to wait upon her: and
though she seems not altogether so great a beauty as she had before told
me, yet indeed she is mighty pretty; and so pretty, that I find I shall
be too much pleased with it, and therefore could be contented as to my
judgement, though not to my passion, that she might not come, lest I may
be found too much minding her, to the discontent of my wife. She is
to come next week. She seems, by her discourse, to be grave beyond her
bigness and age, and exceeding well bred as to her deportment, having
been a scholar in a school at Bow these seven or eight years. To the
office again, my head running on this pretty girl, and there till noon,
when Creed and Sheres come and dined with me; and we had a great deal
of pretty discourse of the ceremoniousness of the Spaniards, whose
ceremonies are so many and so known, that, Sheres tells me, upon all
occasions of joy or sorrow in a Grandee's family, my Lord Embassador is
fain to send one with an 'en hora buena', if it be upon a marriage, or
birth of a child, or a 'pesa me', if it be upon the death of a child,
or so. And these ceremonies are so set, and the words of the compliment,
that he hath been sent from my Lord,