Little points of life and manners come out occasionally. Baker, the author of a work on algebra much esteemed at the time, wrote to Collins that their circumstances are alike, "having a just and equal number of chargeable olive-branches, and being in the same predicament and blessed condemnation with you, not more preaching than unpaid, and preaching the art of contentment to others, am forced to practise it." But the last sentence of his letter runs as follows: "I have sent by the bearer ... twenty shillings, as a token to you; desiring you to accept of it, as a small taste from Yours, Thos. Baker." In our day, men of a station to pay parish taxes do not offer their friends hard money to buy liquor. But Flamsteed[562] writes to Collins as follows: "Last week he sent us down the counterpart, which {307} my father has scaled, and I return up to you by the carrier, with 5l. to be paid to Mr. Leneve for the writing, I have added 2s. 6d. over, which will pay the expenses and serve to drink, with him." This would seem as odd to us as it would have seemed thirty years ago that half-a-crown should pay carriage for a deed from Derby to London, and leave margin for a bottle of wine: in our day, the Post-office and the French treaty would just manage it between them. But Flamsteed does not limit his friend to one bottle; he adds, "If you expend more than the half-crown, I will make it good after Whitsuntide." Collins does not remember exactly where he had met James Gregory, and mentions two equally likely places thus: "Sir, it was once my good hap to meet with you in an alehouse or in Sion College." There is a little proof how universally the dinner-hour was twelve o'clock. Astronomers well know the method of finding time by equal altitudes of the sun before and after noon: Huyghens calls it "le moyen de deux egales hauteurs du soleil devant et apres _diner_."[563]