Friday 26 July 1667

Up, and betimes to the office, where Mr. Hater and I together all the morning about the perfecting of my abstract book of contracts and other things to my great content. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again all the afternoon doing of other good things there, and being tired, I then abroad with my wife and left her at the New Exchange, while I by water thence to Westminster to the Hall, but shops were shut up, and so to White Hall by water, and thence took up my wife at Unthanke’s, and so home, mightily tired with the dust in riding in a coach, it being mighty troublesome. So home and to my office, and there busy very late, and then to walk a little with my wife, and then to supper and to bed. No news at all this day what we have done to the enemy, but that the enemy is fallen down, and we after them, but to little purpose.


8 Annotations

First Reading

JWB  •  Link

"...mighty troublesome..."

'The Horse & the Urban Environment'

http://www.enviroliteracy.org/art…

And then the horses got 'heaves' (bronchitis), sometimes so bad they could not eat sufficient provender to keep up the work load & so slowly faded to collapse.

cum salis grano  •  Link

refuse everywhere, so much litter, all those orange peels.

Carl in Boston  •  Link

Fantastic about the horse, apropos of Samuel. There was some Council of Rome, a think tank, which predicted the horse manure would rise to fifty feet high in every town by 1915. Something like that, but the automobile arose and changed all. Then the Council predicted the oil supply on earth would run out by 2010, but green alternatives have arisen. Very hard to predict the future, but we have Sam to see into the past. Hard to classify this as a report of research, but the philosophy is plain to divine.

Mary  •  Link

that dust.

The London summer of 1667 appears to have been as warm and dry as the one that we are enjoying at present. Those of us living on unsurfaced roads in eastern/southeastern England know all about the dust - though we're largely spared the quantities of horse-droppings that Sam's fellow citizens encountered.

L. K. van Marjenhoff  •  Link

The book "Black Beauty" (1871) was written by Anna Sewell specifically to draw attention to the hard life of London cab horses and arouse sympathy for them. This novel is said the be the 6th best-selling book in the English language.

cum salis grano  •  Link

PS the unsprung coach too, rattled bones, most luxurious?

Second Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

"No news at all this day what we have done to the enemy, but that the enemy is fallen down"

L&M note this refers to the Dutch having sailed away down the Thames.

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