26th.  Up, and to my chamber, whither Jonas Moore comes, and, among other things, after our business done, discoursing of matters of the office, I shewed him my varnished things, which he says he can outdo much, and tells me the mighty use of Napier’s bones;

[John Napier or Neper (1550-1617), laird of Merchiston (now swallowed up in the enlarged Edinburgh of to-day, although the old castle still stands), and the inventor of logarithms.  He published his “Rabdologiae seu numerationis per virgulas libri duo” in 1617, and the work was reprinted and translated into Italian (1623) and Dutch (1626).  In 1667 William Leybourn published “The Art of Numbering by Speaking Rods, vulgarly termed Napier’s Bones.”]

so that I will have a pair presently.  To the office, where busy all the morning sitting, and at noon home to dinner, and then with my wife abroad to the King’s playhouse, to shew her yesterday’s new play, which I like as I did yesterday, the principal thing extraordinary being the dance, which is very good.  So to Charing Cross by coach, about my wife’s business, and then home round by London Wall, it being very dark and dirty, and so to supper, and, for the ease of my eyes, to bed, having first ended all my letters at the office.

27th.  Up, and to the office, where very busy all the morning.  While I was busy at the Office, my wife sends for me to come home, and what was it but to see the pretty girl which she is taking to wait upon her:  and though she seems not altogether so great a beauty as she had before told me, yet indeed she is mighty pretty; and so pretty, that I find I shall be too much pleased with it, and therefore could be contented as to my judgement, though not to my passion, that she might not come, lest I may be found too much minding her, to the discontent of my wife.  She is to come next week.  She seems, by her discourse, to be grave beyond her bigness and age, and exceeding well bred as to her deportment, having been a scholar in a school at Bow these seven or eight years.  To the office again, my head running on this pretty girl, and there till noon, when Creed and Sheres come and dined with me; and we had a great deal of pretty discourse of the ceremoniousness of the Spaniards, whose ceremonies are so many and so known, that, Sheres tells me, upon all occasions of joy or sorrow in a Grandee’s family, my Lord Embassador is fain to send one with an ‘en hora buena’, if it be upon a marriage, or birth of a child, or a ‘pesa me’, if it be upon the death of a child, or so.  And these ceremonies are so set, and the words of the compliment, that he hath been sent from my Lord, when he hath done no more than send in word to the Grandee that one was there from the Embassador; and he knowing what was his errand, that hath been enough, and he never spoken with him:  nay, several Grandees having been to marry a daughter, have wrote letters to my Lord to give him notice, and out of the greatness of his wisdom