(Lord’s day).
My wife and I to church this morning, and so home to dinner to a boiled leg of mutton all alone.
To church again, where, before sermon, a long Psalm was set that lasted an hour, while the sexton gathered his year’s contribucion through the whole church.
After sermon home, and there I went to my chamber and wrote a letter to send to Mr. Coventry, with a piece of plate along with it, which I do preserve among my other letters.
So to supper, and thence after prayers to bed.
My wife is an oiled leg of church,
a long psalm,
sex the red letter I preserve
among my other prayers.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 6 January 1660/61.
Oh, yeah! And “red letter” is such a nice hinge for me between Hawthorne and red-letter edition Bibles.
Glad that worked for you. This one took a while to come together.
Man, I love this one, too. Question: I kind of assume you do, but are you doing one of these for each entry in Pepys’s diary? And how long have you been doing this?
And for what it’s worth, you’ve inspired me to take on a very similar project (thought much smaller than this whole diary would be), though I’ll probably keep it under wraps until I convince myself I’ll finish it!
Hi, yes. I started Jan. 1 of last year and haven’t missed an entry yet. A few generated two alternate erasures. You can read them all at the category link, if you’re feeling especially masochistic.
And I’m glad to hear I’ve prompted you to try something similar! That’s the best possible kind of feedback. Good luck.