29th.  Busy all the morning at the office.  So home to dinner, where Mercer, and there comes Mr. Swan, my old acquaintance, and dines with me, and tells me, for a certainty, that Creed is to marry Betty Pickering, and that the thing is concluded, which I wonder at, and am vexed for.  So he gone I with my wife and two girls to the King’s house, and saw “The Mad Couple,” a mean play altogether, and thence to Hyde Parke, where but few coaches, and so to the New Exchange, and thence by water home, with much pleasure, and then to sing in the garden, and so home to bed, my eyes for these four days being my trouble, and my heart thereby mighty sad.

30th.  Up, and by water to White Hall.  There met with Mr. May, who was giving directions about making a close way for people to go dry from the gate up into the House, to prevent their going through the galleries; which will be very good.  I staid and talked with him about the state of the King’s Offices in general, and how ill he is served, and do still find him an excellent person, and so back to the office.  So close at my office all the afternoon till evening, and then out with my wife to the New Exchange, and so back again.

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