is the end for which, in the most part, we live, to have such a merry day
once or twice in a man's life.

7th (Lord's day). Up, and to the office, busy till church time, and then
to church, where a dull sermon, and so home to dinner, all alone with my
wife, and then to even my Journall to this day, and then to the Tower, to
see Sir W. Coventry, who had H. Jermin and a great many more with him, and
more, while I was there, come in; so that I do hear that there was not
less than sixty coaches there yesterday, and the other day; which I hear
also that there is a great exception taken at, by the King and the Duke of
Buckingham, but it cannot be helped. Thence home, and with our coach out
to Suffolk Street, to see my cozen Pepys, but neither the old nor young at
home. So to my cozen Turner's, and there staid talking a little, and then
back to Suffolk Street, where they not being yet come home I to White
Hall, and there hear that there are letters come from Sir Thomas Allen,
that he hath made some kind of peace with Algiers; upon which the King and
Duke of York, being to go out of town to-morrow, are met at my Lord
Arlington's: so I there, and by Mr. Wren was desired to stay to see if
there were occasion for their speaking with me, which I did, walking
without, with Charles Porter,

[Charles Porter "was the son of a prebend[ary] in Norwich, and a
'prentice boy in the city in the rebellious times. When the
committee house was blown up, he was very active in that rising, and
after the soldiers came and dispersed the rout, he, as a rat among
joint stools, shifted to and fro among the shambles, and had forty
pistols shot at him by the troopers that rode after him to kill him
[24th April, 1648]. In that distress he had the presence of mind to
catch up a little child that, during the rout, was frighted, and
stood crying in the streets, and, unobserved by the troopers, ran