Maslow’s hierarchy

(Lord’s day).
To church, it being a very wet night last night and to-day, dined at home, and so to church again with my wife in the afternoon, and coming home again found our new maid Doll asleep, that she could not hear to let us in, so that we were fain to send the boy in at a window to open the door to us.
So up to my chamber all alone, and troubled in mind to think how much of late I have addicted myself to expense and pleasure, that now I can hardly reclaim myself to look after my great business of settling Gravely business, until now almost too late. I pray God give me grace to begin now to look after my business, but it always was, and I fear will ever be, my foible that after I am once got behind-hand with business, I am hard to set to it again to recover it.
In the evening I begun to look over my accounts and upon the whole I do find myself, by what I can yet see, worth near 600l., for which God be blessed, which put me into great comfort. So to supper and to bed.

Wet with my wife in the wind,
gravely I pray
God give me grace—
and cover, and comfort.

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 8 September 1661.