the village papers."

Whatever else these proceedings show, they make it clear that the people
of Cooperstown had not well improved the opportunity afforded by his
residence among them, of becoming well acquainted with the character of
their distinguished townsman. Still there was knowledge enough about him
to make the officers of the meeting unwilling to publish the resolutions
as they had been ordered. He was not a man to be trifled with; and no
one cared to make himself personally responsible for what had been said.
As a matter of fact the secretary of the meeting furnished Cooper with a
copy of the resolutions; and it was the latter that first caused them to
be printed. But the story of the meeting speedily found its way into the
newspapers. In the accounts of the proceedings that were in circulation,
it was said that a resolution had been passed that the works of the
novelist should be taken from the library and publicly burned. This was
caught up by the press and repeated everywhere throughout the country.
To this day the baseless tradition lingers in Cooperstown itself, that
this act was not only determined upon but actually done. The matter
doubtless was discussed among the other sage proposals that were brought
forward at this meeting; and it may be true, as was afterwards
suspected, that the original resolution on this point was modified
before it was allowed to go out to the public.

Under the circumstances only one result was possible. The (p. 147)
community were very speedily satisfied that they did not own the Point,
and were equally convinced that their prospect of obtaining possession
of it by clamor was far from good. Two letters, marked by anything but
timidity or amiability, Cooper wrote to the Democratic newspaper of the
village. In them he gave fully all the facts in the case. To the
assertion paraded in many of the Whig journals of the state, that this
meeting showed the spirit of the people in Cooperstown, he made an
indignant reply. Such a remark, he said, was a libel on the character of
the place. The meeting, he declared, was not composed of a fourth part
of the population, or a hundredth part of the respectability of the
village. The resolutions he described as being the work of presuming
boys, who swagger of time immemorial; of strangers who had lived but a
brief time in the county; and of a few disreputable persons who, bent on
construing liberty entirely on their own side, interpos