As a result of his mock debates with Collins, Franklin began to tailor for himself a persona that was less contentious and confrontational, which made him seem endearing and charming as he grew older—or, to a small but vocal cadre of enemies, manipulative and conniving. Being “disputatious,” he concluded, was “a very bad habit” because contradicting people produced “disgusts and perhaps enmities.” Later in his life he would wryly say of disputing: “Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at
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