Paid John Watford 15d for ½ bushel oats. …At home all day. Paid Joseph Fuller 3/- for a cleaver he brought from Pocock’s at Ringmer for me, and which he paid him for. Rec’d of Mr Sam Gibbs 1.3.9 in full. When Mr Gibbs paid me his bill, Mr French and Thomas Fuller were in company with him; so that common civility and gratitude obliged me to ask them all to walk in, which they did and stayed with me till near 7 o’clock. But I think nothing can be more frothy than those men’s discourse, for let us only think that they are all masters of families and fathers of many children, and yet their whole discourse seems turned to obscenity, oaths, gaming and hunting–nothing to the improvement of the mind nor the honor of God or man, which still confirms me in the opinion I have of the degeneracy of this present age. Not that I would be thought to draw a conclusion from a single instance or a few people, but it is what I see daily and almost hourly. Thomas Davy at our house in the evening, to whom I read part of Sherlock on death.