[Stoveing, in sail-making, is the heating of the bolt-ropes, so as
     to make them pliable.—­B.]

and making of cables.  But to see how despicably they speak of us for our using so many hands more to do anything than they do, they closing a cable with 20, that we use 60 men upon.  Thence home and eat something, and then to my office, where very late, and then to supper and to bed.  Captain Stokes, it seems, is at last dead at Portsmouth.

14th (St. Valentine).  This morning comes betimes Dicke Pen, to be my wife’s Valentine, and come to our bedside.  By the same token, I had him brought to my side, thinking to have made him kiss me; but he perceived me, and would not; so went to his Valentine:  a notable, stout, witty boy.  I up about business, and, opening the door, there was Bagwell’s wife, with whom I talked afterwards, and she had the confidence to say she came with a hope to be time enough to be my Valentine, and so indeed she did, but my oath preserved me from loosing any time with her, and so I and my boy abroad by coach to Westminster, where did two or three businesses, and then home to the ’Change, and did much business there.  My Lord Sandwich is, it seems, with his fleete at Alborough Bay.  So home to dinner and then to the office, where till 12 almost at night, and then home to supper and to bed.

15th.  Up and to my office, where busy all the morning.  At noon with Creed to dinner to Trinity-house, where a very good dinner among the old sokers, where an extraordinary discourse of the manner of the loss of the “Royall Oake” coming home from Bantam, upon the rocks of Scilly, many passages therein very extraordinary, and if I can I will get it in writing.  Thence with Creed to Gresham College, where I had been by Mr. Povy the last week proposed to be admitted a member;

[According to the minutes of the Royal Society for February 15th, 1664-65, “Mr. Pepys was unanimously elected and admitted.”  Notes of the experiments shown by Hooke and Boyle are given in Birch’s “History of the Royal Society,” vol. ii., p. 15.]

and was this day admitted, by signing a book and being taken by the hand by the President, my Lord Brunkard, and some words of admittance said to me.  But it is a most acceptable thing to hear their discourse, and see their experiments; which were this day upon the nature of fire, and how it goes out in a place where the ayre is not free, and sooner out where the ayre is exhausted, which they showed by an engine on purpose.  After this being done, they to the Crowne Taverne, behind the ’Change, and there my Lord and most of the company to a club supper; Sir P. Neale, Sir R. Murrey, Dr. Clerke, Dr. Whistler, Dr. Goddard, and others of most eminent worth.  Above all, Mr. Boyle to-day was at the meeting, and above him Mr. Hooke, who is the most, and promises the least, of any man in the world that ever I saw.  Here excellent discourse till ten at night, and then home, and to Sir W. Batten’s, where I hear that Sir Thos.  Harvy intends to put Mr. Turner out of his house and come in himself, which will be very hard to them, and though I love him not, yet for his family’s sake I pity him.  So home and to bed.