It is far from being all mellowness and amiability, that Diary. Hone had his prejudices and dislikes and strong political opinions. In the portraits that have been preserved there is the suggestion of intolerance and smug self-satisfaction. Also life did not turn out quite so rosy as it promised in 1828, when he retired from business with a handsome competence. In 1836, during the commercial depression, he met with financial reverses which forced him to return to the game of money-getting. He became president of the American Mutual Insurance Company, which was ruined by the great fire of July 19, 1845. "A fire has occurred," he recorded in the entry of that date, "the loss of which is probably $5,000,000; several of the insurance companies are ruined, and all are crippled. My office, I fear, is in the former category. We have lost between three and four hundred thousand dollars, which is more than we can pay. "This is a hard stroke for me. I was pleasantly situated with a moderate support for my declining years, and now, 'Othello's occupation's gone.'" But he met his reverses in a courageous manner, and in 1849 President Taylor appointed him Naval Officer of the Port of New York, a place which he held until his death. As became his day, Hone was a good trencherman. In the index to the Diary there are one hundred and sixteen pages marked as containing reference of some kind to dinner parties. The old New York names appear again and again. H. Brevoort, Chancellor and Mrs. Kent, Mr. and Mrs. W.B. Astor, Bishop Hobart, C. Brugiere and Miss Brugiere, Robert Maitland, Dr. Wainwright, Mr. and Mrs. Anthon, Judge Spencer, Judge Irving, Dr. Hosack, Peter Jay, P. Schemerhorn. And only the formal dinner parties are indexed. Aside from them there are scores of allusions to where the diarist dined and who dined with him. Small wonder that the passing of a cook of unusual abilities was an event to be recorded. An early entry, that of February 17, 1829, reads: "Died this morning, Simon, the celebrated cook. He was a respectable man, who has for many years been the fashionable cook in New York, and his loss will be felt on all occasions of large dinner and evening parties, unless it should be found that some suitable shoulders should be ready to receive the mantle of this distinguished _cuisinier_." When Hone was not entertaining at his own home or being entertained at somebody else's, he was trying out the fare at some one of the public hostelries. Date of December 18, 1830, there is reference to a familiar name. "Moore, Giraud, and I went yesterday to dine at Delmonico's, a French _restaurateur_, in William Street, which I had heard was on the Parisian plan, and very good. We satisfied our curiosity, but not our appetites."