His countenance was forbidding, except when lighted up by a smile, which was only upon rare occasions.  He was intolerant of what he called “stuff and nonsense,” and had a way of disconcerting people by grunting whenever anything like sentimentality or gush was uttered in his presence.

When he first came, his stern, dictatorial manner, together with the persistent coldness which resisted all attempts to be friendly and sociable, hurt and offended me; but he was so different when among the sick, so gentle, so benignant beside the bedsides of suffering men, that I soon learned to know and appreciate the royal heart which at other times he managed to conceal under a rough and forbidding exterior.

Dr. Archer, of Maryland, was as complete a contrast as could be imagined.  A poet of no mean order, indulging in all the idiosyncrasies of a poet, he was yet a man of great nerve and an excellent surgeon.  Always dressed with careful negligence, his hands beautifully white, his beard unshorn, his auburn hair floating over his uniformed shoulders in long ringlets, soft in speech, so very deferential to ladies as to seem almost lover-like, he was, nevertheless, very manly.  Quite a cavalier one could look up to and respect.  At first I thought him effeminate, and did not like him, but his tender ways with my sick boys, the efficacy of his prescriptions, and his careful orders as to diet quite won me over.  Our friendship lasted until the end of my service in the Buckner Hospital, since which I have never seen him.  Another complete contrast to Diogenes was Dr. Conway, of Virginia, our Chesterfield.  His perfect manners and courtly observance of the smallest requirements of good breeding and etiquette made us feel quite as if we were lord and ladies.  Dr. Conway had a way of conveying subtle indefinable flattery which was very elevating to one’s self-esteem.  Others enjoyed it in full, but often, just as our Chesterfield had interviewed me, infusing even into the homely subject of diet-lists much that was calculated to puff up my vanity, in would stalk Diogenes, who never failed to bring me to a realizing sense of the hollowness of it all.  Dr. Hughes was a venerable and excellent gentleman, who constituted himself my mentor.  He never failed to drop in every day, being always ready to smooth tangled threads for me.  He was forever protesting against the habit I had contracted in Richmond, and never afterwards relinquished, of remaining late by the bedside of dying patients, or going to the wards whenever summoned at night.  He would say, “Daughter, it is not right, it is not safe; not only do you risk contagion by breathing the foul air of the wards at night, but some of these soldiers are mighty rough and might not always justify your confidence in them.”  But I would not listen.  My firm belief in the honor of “my boys” and in their true and chivalrous devotion towards myself caused me to trust them utterly at all times and places.  I can truly