good news making me very lively, only the arrears of much business on my
hands and my accounts to be settled for the whole year past do lie as a
weight on my mind.

30th (Lord's day). Lay long, however up and to church, where Mills made a
good sermon. Here was a collection for the sexton; but it come into my
head why we should be more bold in making the collection while the psalm
is singing, than in the sermon or prayer. Home, and, without any
strangers, to dinner, and then all the afternoon and evening in my chamber
preparing all my accounts in good condition against to-morrow, to state
them for the whole year past, to which God give me a good issue when I
come to close them! So to supper and to bed.

31st. Rising this day with a full design to mind nothing else but to make
up my accounts for the year past, I did take money, and walk forth to
several places in the towne as far as the New Exchange, to pay all my
debts, it being still a very great frost and good walking. I staid at the
Fleece Tavern in Covent Garden while my boy Tom went to W. Joyce's to pay
what I owed for candles there. Thence to the New Exchange to clear my
wife's score, and so going back again I met Doll Lane (Mrs. Martin's
sister), with another young woman of the Hall, one Scott, and took them to
the Half Moon Taverne and there drank some burnt wine with them, without
more pleasure, and so away home by coach, and there to dinner, and then to
my accounts, wherein, at last, I find them clear and right; but, to my
great discontent, do find that my gettings this year have been L573 less
than my last: it being this year in all but L2,986; whereas, the last, I
got L3,560. And then again my spendings this year have exceeded my
spendings the last by L644: my whole spendings last year being but L509;
whereas this year, it appears, I have spent L1154, which is a sum not fit
to be said that ever I should spend in one year, before I am master of a