The French troops were received in America with boundless enthusiasm. Their discipline was admirable. Their respect for the rights of property was such, that not a barn, orchard or hen-roost was robbed. John Adams was sent to join Franklin, to aid him in framing terms of peace, whenever England should be disposed to make such advances. He was a man of great abilities, of irreproachable integrity, but he had inherited, from his English ancestry, not only repulsive brusqueness, but also a prejudice against the French, which nothing could remove. His want of courtesy; his unconcealed assumption that France was acting out of unmitigated selfishness, and that consequently the Americans owed the French no debt of gratitude, often caused Franklin much embarrassment. This blunt man, at one time wrote so uncourteous, not to say insulting a letter, to M. de Vergennes, that the French minister declined having any more correspondence with him. Both Franklin and 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."