In his last visit to his native Anstruther and its neighbourhood, in 1845, his unchanged and unchangeable affection for the scenes and friends of his youth showed a marvellous freshness and tenacity. Many are the stories of his pleasure in recalling memorials of the past. He hunted up an old schoolfellow, a tailor, and told him that he had been the first to acquaint him with the form of the earth. He congratulated another schoolfellow, who, like himself, had suffered from smallpox, that while other people's faces were 'aye getting the waur, theirs were always getting the better o' the wear!' He sought out the place where Lizzie Green's water-bucket used to stand, where he and his heated playfellows had often been allowed very kindly to slake their thirst. But most pathetic was his visit to the house of Barnsmuir. When he was some twelve or fourteen years old, the eldest daughter of that house had been in the habit of riding into Anstruther on a little pony, and Chalmers had conceived a deep and tender attachment to her, like that of Lord Byron for his Mary Duff. The young lady was married while he was at college, and she had died many years before this visit. At his special request her youngest sister met him at Barnsmuir. In the house, the remembrance of that early love came upon him with singular power; he asked respectfully about her life and death, and learned with deep emotion that she had died in the full Christian hope, and that some of his letters to her sister had soothed and comforted her. He then asked if there were any portrait of her, and being shown a profile, gazed on it with great earnestness, fixed his own card on the back of it, and, gazing on it again, gave expression to his strong affection, and burst into a flood of tears. It was a touching proof, as his biographer has said, that he was as much distinguished for the tenderness and tenacity of his attachments as for the brilliance of his gifts.
Dr. Chalmers was ever very simple, and yet in some respects singular, in his habits of life. Abstemious he was to a degree; ever watchful lest he should at any time be in a condition of body that would interfere with the activity of his intellectual and spiritual nature; at times, at least, practising total abstinence, and always great moderation in both food and drink. It was his usual practice to spend the early part of the day in composition and study; he so carefully excogitated his subjects that he was ever ready to use his pen, never obliged to loiter in order to form his plan or shape his thought, but able to write rapidly as soon as the pen was in his hand, and seldom or never correcting. His handwriting was anything but elegant, yet very characteristic; the upright letters, the firmness of each stroke, and the continuity of the whole indicating decision, force, and flow. So exact was his view, that he could calculate for weeks and months beforehand the rate of his progress and the day when each piece of writing would be finished. His remarkable calculating or counting faculty was brought into operation in what we should call fantastic ways. In stropping his razor, he would begin with two strokes, next day three, and so on till he reached a maximum number; then he would reverse the process and gradually diminish till he came back to two. In walking he put his staff to the ground regularly at each fourth step; counting, if he chose, the number of his steps, and able to keep count even if he should meet a friend and walk with him in animated conversation. When he lived in Inverleith Row he delighted to find new routes to the university, and ascertain and record their several lengths. One day, as he told a favourite student, he had been trying to find a near road between Comely Bank and Inverleith Row, but got entangled, as he put it in his original way, 'in the accessories of a farmhouse, where I was set upon by a mastiff, and so obliged to turn back.' We have noted his delight in ascending cathedral towers, and his invariable habit of counting the steps. At any famous stream he would lap the water, thus making the connection more intimate between the stream and himself. His love of order was remarkable, though one might not have supposed it from his general manner. It was through the power of orderliness that he was able to achieve all he did within the compass of his life. By varying his employments,--now writing, now visiting or attending meetings, now travelling, now preaching or lecturing, now entertaining friends, now reading and pondering, he kept himself comparatively fresh, and seemed at all times ready for new work. '_Nulla dies sine linea_' might have been his motto, had it not been that every day had half a dozen linea in place of one.