le,--Dr. Benjamin Wible, also of Louisville, a former partner of
Dr. Bemiss. Diogenes we used to call him, and he did his best to
deserve the name.

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 s