Congress condemned the incivility of Mr. Adams. He only
escaped a motion of censure from the full conviction of Congress of
the purity of his patriotism, and of his intentions.[34]

[Footnote 34: Mr. Jefferson, after an intimacy of seven months with
John Adams, in Paris, wrote of him: "He is vain, irritable, and a bad
calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which
govern men. This is all the ill which can possibly be said of him. He
is as disinterested as the Being who made him."]

Franklin had been requested to forward the correspondence to Congress.
As in duty bound, he did so; accompanying it with a magnanimous
letter. Mr. Adams was very angry. Every impartial reader will admit
that, in this embarrassing affair, Franklin conducted with delicacy
and discretion. The British troops in America were still conducting
like savages. Congress requested Franklin to prepare a school-book,
with thirty-five prints, each depicting one or more of the acts of
English brutality. The object was to impress the minds of children
with a deep sense of the insatiable and bloody malice with which the
English had pursued the Americans. The plan was never executed.

In the year 1781, Franklin, then seventy-five years of age, and having
been engaged in public service for fifty years, wrote to Congress,
begging permission to retire from his responsible office. Congress
could not spare his services. They gave him an additional appointment.
He was commissioned to unite with Adams and Jay, in those negotiations
for peace which, it was evident, must soon take place.

Franklin loved the French, he could smile at their foibles, in
dressing their hair so that they could not wear a hat, but were
compelled to carry it under their arms; also in filling their noses
with tobacco. "These," said he, "are mere follies. There is nothing
wanting, in the character of a Frenchman, that belongs to that of an
agreeable and worthy man."

It may perhaps be mentioned, as a defect in the character of Franklin,
that when in France he could see nothing but the beautiful. His eye
was turned from every revolting spectacle. In the society of elegantly
dressed, highly educated, refined French ladies,--at dinner parties,
glittering with gold and silver plate,--in social intercourse with men
whose philosophical attainments were of the highest order, and whose
politeness of speech and bearing rendered them delightful companions,
Franklin found his time an