Citizen

Up, and while I am dressing I sent for my boy’s brother, William, that lives in town here as a groom, to whom and their sister Jane I told my resolution to keep the boy no longer. So upon the whole they desire to have him stay a week longer, and then he shall go. So to the office, and there Mr. Coventry and I sat till noon, and then I stept to the Exchange, and so home to dinner, and after dinner with my wife to the Duke’s Theatre, and saw the second part of “Rhodes,” done with the new Roxalana; which do it rather better in all respects for person, voice, and judgment, then the first Roxalana. Home with great content with my wife, not so well pleased with the company at the house to-day, which was full of citizens, there hardly being a gentleman or woman in the house; a couple of pretty ladies by us that made sport in it, being jostled and crowded by prentices. So home, and I to my study making up my monthly accounts, which is now fallen again to 630l. or thereabouts, which not long since was 680l., at which I am sorry, but I trust in God I shall get it up again, and in the meantime will live sparingly. So home to supper and to bed.

town is a hole I stepped in
with my voice full of hard use

jostled and crowded
fallen I get up again

I will live sparingly

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 27 December 1662.