heard Mercer's voice, and my boy Tom's singing in the garden, which
pleased me mightily, I longing to see the girl, having not seen her since
my wife went; and so into the garden to her and sang, and then home to
supper, and mightily pleased with her company, in talking and singing, and
so parted, and to bed.

30th. Up, and at the office all the morning. At noon Sir J. Minnes and I
to the Dolphin Tavern, there to meet our neighbours, all of the Parish,
this being Procession-day, to dine. And did; and much very good
discourse; they being, most of them, very able merchants as any in the
City: Sir Andrew Rickard, Mr. Vandeputt, Sir John Fredericke, Harrington,
and others. They talked with Mr. Mills about the meaning of this day, and
the good uses of it; and how heretofore, and yet in several places, they
do whip a boy at each place they stop at in their procession. Thence I to
the Duke of York's playhouse, and there saw "The Tempest," which still
pleases me mightily, and thence to the New Exchange, and then home, and in
the way stopped to talk with Mr. Brisband, who gives me an account of the
rough usage Sir G. Carteret and his Counsel had the other day, before the
Commissioners of Accounts, and what I do believe we shall all of us have,
in a greater degree than any he hath had yet with them, before their three
years are out, which are not yet begun, nor God knows when they will, this
being like to be no session of Parliament, when they now rise. So home,
and there took up Mrs. Turner and carried her to Mile End and drank, and
so back talking, and so home and to bed, I being mighty cold, this being a
mighty cold day, and I had left off my waistcoat three or four days. This
evening, coming home in the dusk, I saw and spoke to our Nell, Pain's
daughter, and had I not been very cold I should have taken her to Tower
hill para together et toker her. Thus ends this month; my wife in the
country, myself full of pleasure and expence; and some trouble for my
friends, my Lord Sandwich, by the Parliament, and more for my eyes, which
are daily worse and worse, that I dare not write or read almost any thing.
The Parliament going in a few days to rise; myself so long without
accounting now, for seven or eight months, I think, or more, that I know
not what condition almost I am in, as to getting or spending for all that
time, which troubles me, but I will soon do it. The kingdom in an ill
state through poverty; a fleete going out,