# The North Star (Rochester)/1847/12/03/Reminiscences of Chalmers

REMINISCENCES OF CHALMERS.
On entering Kilmany one Sabbath morning, I was informed that Mrs. Chalmers had, during the preceding night, presented the Doctor with his first child. On meeting with him, I adverted to the circumstance, and inquired how Mrs. Chalmers and the child were getting on. He replied that, "they are as well as could be expected; but I could not have conceived that an event of this kind would have occasioned such a stir; that so many persons would be employed about it; that there would have been such a running up and down stairs, and from one apartment to another; and all this bustle about bringing into the world a creature not three feet long." I observed that no bustle would be more cheerfully submitted to than that which takes place at the birth of a child, whose utter helplessness makes so irresistable an appeal to our sympathy and tenderness. And, as to the child not being three feet long, we must estimate its value as we do that of a young tree—not by the smallness of its dimensions, but by the size that we expect it to attain. "There may be some truth in that," said the Doctor, smiling, "but really such a bustle as the house was thrown into by this affair, I was quite unprepared to expect."
Of the bewilderment to which contemplative persons are liable, the Doctor exhibited a ludicrous instance, by coming on one occasion from Kilmany to Cupar, with a pair of stockings, of which the one was of a quite different pattern from that of the other. The person on whom he had called, and from whom I had the anecdote, pointed out to the astonished Doctor the mistake he had committed.
Dr. Chalmers' toilet was soon dispatched. To the advantage which dress gives to the external appearance, he was remarkably indifferent. He might have been seen walking about Kilmany in such faded habiliments as would have made a person who did not know him suppose that his condition was a large remove beneath that of a clergyman. On one occasion, when walking to Cupar, accompanied by my brother, I encountered the Doctor on the Kilmany road, and stopped a few minutes to converse with him. When I overtook my brother, who had gone forward, he said, that he wondered how I had become acquainted with the beadle of the parish. "The beadle!" I exclaimed. "Don't judge by the outward appearance. He is the minister of the parish, the celebrated Dr. Chalmers with whom any one, however exalted his rank, might be proud to be acquainted."
A specimen of caligraphy so difficult to decipher as that of Dr. Chalmers, believe it would not be easy to find. His letters were so shapeless, so unlike those they were designed to represent, that you would have been almost tempted to think that he intended to mystify his meaning and perplex his correspondent. I once received a letter from him, which nobody to whom I showed it could read, and which I believe would have baffled all my attempts to do so, had I not been previously acquainted with the subject to which it referred.
Studious persons are somtimes surprisingly ignorant how to act on ordinary occasions. Dr. Chalmers came home one evening on horseback, and, as neither the man who had the charge of his horse, nor the key of the stable could be found, he was for some time not a little puzzled where to find a temporary residence for the animal. At last he fixed on the garden, as the fittest place he could think of for the purpose; and, having led the horse thither, he placed it on the garden walk. When his sister, who had also been from home, returned, was told that the key of the stable could not be found, she enquired what had been done with the horse. "I took it to the garden," said the Doctor. "To the garden!" she exclaimed; "then all our flower and vegetable beds will be destroyed." "Don't be afraid of that," said the Doctor, "for I took particular care to place the horse on the garden-walk." "And did you really imagine," rejoined the sister, "that he would remain there?" "I have no doubt of it," said the Doctor; "for no sagacious an animal as the horse could not but be aware of the propriety of refraining from injuring the products of the garden." "I am afraid," said Miss Chalmers, "that you will think less favorably of the discretion of the horse when you have seen the garden." To decide the controversy by an appeal to the facts, they went to the garden, and found, from the ruthless devastation which the trampling and rolling of the animal had spread over every part of it, that the natural philosophy of the horse was a subject with which the lady was far more accurately acquainted than her learned brother. "I never could have imagined," said the Doctor, "that horses were such senseless animals."—Hogg's Weekly Instructor.