Cobbett, in 1819, announced his intention of publishing a biography of Paine. Soon after a pious fanatic of New York, named Collins, attempted to persuade him that Paine had recanted and begged him to state the fact in his book. He had induced a disreputable woman, Mary Hinsdale, an opium fiend, notorious for her lying propensities, to promise that she would tell Cobbett that she had visited Paine during his illness and that he had confessed to her his disbelief in the "Age of Reason" and expressed regret for having published it. Cobbett saw at once that the whole thing was a fraud. Collins, he says, "had a sodden face, a simper, and maneuvered his features precisely like the most perfidious wretch that I have known." However, he called on the woman. But her courage had forsaken her. Concerning the result of his visit he says: "She shuffled; she evaded; she equivocated; she warded off; she affected not to understand me." It was afterward proven that she had not conversed with Paine; that she had never seen him. But it did not need Cobbett's publication of the lie to secure its acceptance by the church. The occupant of nearly every orthodox pulpit was only too willing to publish it. This was the origin of the recantation calumny. "Had Thomas Paine recanted, every citizen of New York would have heard of it within twenty-four hours. The news of it would have spread to the remotest confines of America and Europe as rapidly as the human agencies of that time could have transmitted it. It took ten years for this startling revelation to reach the ears of his sickbed attendants."--The Fathers of Our Republic. Rev. Willet Hicks: "I was with him every day during the latter part of his sickness. He died as easy as any one I ever saw die, and I have seen many die." "Paine died quietly and at peace."--_Ellery Sedgwick._ "He died placidly and almost without a struggle."--_Gilbert Vale._ "He spent the night in tranquility, and expired in the morning."--_Madame Bonneville._ Noble L. Prentiss: "Paine's death-bed terrors were used in the pulpit for a long time. It is probable that they never existed. It is living not dying, that troubles most of us. When the inevitable hour comes; when the lights are being put out, the shutters closed, the end is peace." Concerning Paine's recanting Colonel Ingersoll says: "He died surrounded by those who hated and despised him,--who endeavored to wring from the lips of death a recantation. But, dying as he was, his soul stood erect to the last moment. Nothing like a recantation could be wrung from the brave lips of Thomas Paine." Col. John Fellows: "It [the recantation story] was considered by the friends of Mr. Paine generally to be too contemptible to controvert."