Friday, December 6. — A warm, bright day. The chaplain returned today; not an agreeable or useful person. He has been absent over two months. I wish he had not returned.
Colonel Scammon gave me a good, long confidential talk. Like all men having some trifling peculiarities which are not pleasant but who are sterling in all important things, he is best liked when best known. He is a gentleman by instinct as well as breeding and is a most warm-hearted, kindly gentleman; and yet many of the men think him the opposite of all this. I must take more pains than I have [taken] to give them just ideas of him.
