31st.  Up, and at my office all the morning.  About noon with Mr. Ashburnham to the new Excise Office, and there discoursed about our business, and I made him admire my drawing a thing presently in shorthand:  but, God knows!  I have paid dear for it, in my eyes.  Home and to dinner, and then my wife and Deb. and I, with Sir J. Minnes, to White Hall, she going hence to the New Exchange, and the Duke of York not being in the way, Sir J. Minnes and I to her and took them two to the King’s house, to see the first day of Lacy’s “Monsieur Ragou,” now new acted.  The King and Court all there, and mighty merry—­a farce.  Thence Sir J. Minnes giving us, like a gentleman, his coach, hearing we had some business, we to the Park, and so home.  Little pleasure there, there being little company, but mightily taken with a little chariot that we saw in the street, and which we are resolved to have ours like it.  So home to walk in the garden a little, and then to bed.  The month ends mighty sadly with me, my eyes being now past all use almost; and I am mighty hot upon trying the late printed experiment of paper tubes.

[An account of these tubulous spectacles ("An easy help for decayed sight”) is given in “The Philosophical Transactions,” No. 37, pp. 727,731 (Hutton’s Abridgment, vol. i., p. 266).  See Diary, August 12th and 23rd, post.]

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     At work, till I was almost blind, which makes my heart sad
     Bristol milk (the sherry) in the vaults
     But get no ground there yet
     Cannot be clean to go so many bodies together in the same water
     City pay him great respect, and he the like to the meanest
     Cost me L5, which troubles me, but yet do please me also
     Espinette is the French term for a small harpsichord
     Forced to change gold, 8s. 7d.; servants and poor, 1s. 6d. 
     Frequent trouble in things we deserve best in
     How natural it is for us to slight people out of power
     I could have answered, but forbore
     Little pleasure now in a play, the company being but little
     Made him admire my drawing a thing presently in shorthand
     My wife hath something in her gizzard, that only waits
     My wife’s neglect of things, and impertinent humour
     So out, and lost our way, which made me vexed
     Suffered her humour to spend, till we begun to be very quiet
     Troubled me, to see the confidence of the vice of the age
     Up, finding our beds good, but lousy; which made us merry
     Weather being very wet and hot to keep meat in. 
     When he was seriously ill he declared himself a Roman Catholic
     Where a pedlar was in bed, and made him rise