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.
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