24th. Up betimes, and with my salt eel

[A salt eel is a rope's end cut from the piece to be used on the
back of a culprit. "Yeow shall have salt eel for supper" is an
emphatic threat.]

went down in the parler and there got my boy and did beat him till I was
fain to take breath two or three times, yet for all I am afeard it will
make the boy never the better, he is grown so hardened in his tricks,
which I am sorry for, he being capable of making a brave man, and is a boy
that I and my wife love very well. So made me ready, and to my office,
where all the morning, and at noon home, whither came Captain Holland, who
is lately come home from sea, and has been much harassed in law about the
ship which he has bought, so that it seems in a despair he endeavoured to
cut his own throat, but is recovered it; and it seems whether by that or
any other persuasion (his wife's mother being a great zealot) he is turned
almost a Quaker, his discourse being nothing but holy, and that
impertinent, that I was weary of him. At last pretending to go to the
Change we walked thither together, and there I left him and home to
dinner, sending my boy by the way to enquire after two dancing masters at
our end of the town for my wife to learn, of whose names the boy brought
word. After dinner all the afternoon fiddling upon my viallin (which I
have not done many a day) while Ashwell danced above in my upper best
chamber, which is a rare room for musique, expecting this afternoon my
wife to bring my cozen Scott and Stradwick, but they came not, and so in
the evening we by ourselves to Half-way house to walk, but did not go in
there, but only a walk and so home again and to supper, my father with us,
and had a good lobster intended for part of our entertainment to these
people to-day, and so to cards, and then to bed, being the first day that
I have spent so much to my pleasure a great while.