In the morning after breakfast I got up on one of Mr Bachelor’s horses and rode with him over to Summerford in order to try him. Stayed and drank one bottle of cider with Mr Mills in company with Mr Jackson, Abraham Spencer, Mr Heyward and Mr Bachelor. Came home again about 11 o’clock. Dined at my father Slater’s on a roasted loin of veal and a plum pudding. After dinner my father Slater, Samuel Slater, Master Paine and myself, with Mr Bachelor, went beyond Buckhurst to see another mare of Mr Bachelor’s, which we caught and brought to Hartfield, calling, as we came along, at Buckhurst and drinking 2 or 3 mugs of beer.
This mare I like very well and am to give 8 guineas for her and to send him word by the carrier whether I will have her or no. We drank tea at my father Slater’s, and about 5:45 my wife and I came away. She gave the maid 12d, and I the man 12d. Samuel Slater brought us on our road about 6 miles. We came home about 9:15, just before there came on a very great tempest, for we had not been at home above ½ an hour before it began to thunder and lighten at a prodigious rate. There also was a very great quantity of hail and rain, and it was also very windy. Our maid at home dined on the remains of yesterday’s dinner. Rec’d of my father Slater 3.16.4 in full. He gave me, in the way of balancing accounts, about 20/-, but unknown to his wife, who I think is the very picture of ill nature, and to whom in a manner I may partly charge some of my misfortunes. For her temper is not unlike that of Xantippe, nor my father’s far distant from that of Socrates.