No, John Quincy Adams did not sell an American girl to the Russian Czar from a collection of love slaves he supposedly kept at the embassy. But this did not stop his enemies from saying he did. Actually, the former minister to Russia was possibly the most prudish man to become president. Like his father John Adams, the second president, "Quincy" was overly serious, stuffy, and in his own words, "a man of reserved, cold, austere and forbidding manners." Still, the president had one burning passion, and that was skinny-dipping. Rising at 3 AM, Adams would sneak out of the White House, and frolic in the chilly Potomac. There were hazards, like the time someone stole his clothes. One dark morning Adams heard a cry, "Come here!" He looked up out of the water to see a woman on the riverbank, seated on his clothes. Adams swam over. She introduced herself as Anne Royall, a newspaper reporter who hoped for an interview on the major issue of the day, whether or not to have a national bank. Adams begged her to go behind the bushes so he could dress, promising that afterward he would gladly grant the interview. "No you don't," Royall refused, as the president bobbed in chin-deep water. "I stalked you from the Mansion down here," she said firmly, explaining she had repeatedly "hammered at the White House" with no response. She told Adams that if he rose from the water, she would scream, alerting some fishermen around the bend. Considering the scandal that could create, the shivering president quickly granted the interview.