Thereupon the town of Lewistown, Maine, built a huge bonfire on the shore directly opposite Queenstown and destroyed all the "Midshipman Easys," "Peter Simples," "Japhets," and "Jacob Faithfuls" that could be obtained.

Hone commented sensibly on the affair in his Diary for May 5, 1838.

"Captain Marryat, I dare say, made a fool of himself (not a very difficult task, I should judge, from what I have seen of him); but the Lewistownians have beaten him all to smash, as the Kentuckians say.

How mortified he must have been to hear that his books had been burned after they were paid for!" A year before Marryat had dined at the Hone house in New York and the host wrote: "The lion, Captain Marryat, is no great things of a lion, after all.

In truth, the author of 'Peter Simple' and 'Jacob Faithful' is a very every-day sort of a man.