Perhaps Buchman was still nervous when he was introduced to the student assembly. In any event, he could hardly have begun more ineptly. 'Greetings, students of State College,' he declared in a high-pitched voice, and was duly greeted with howls of merriment and derision. At that moment, the YMCA committee may have felt relieved that they had only hired him for six months.

They need not have worried. Buchman attacked his new job with the pent-up energy of a man just back from an eight-month holiday who was determined not to fail and who, furthermore, had a deep experience to share. Soon, his mother was complaining that he only sent her postcards instead of the usual letters.5 He was working eighteen to twenty hours a day, had stepped up the YMCA's level of activity with a new programme of classes and meetings, and seemed to be everywhere at once. 'He was robust, always neatly dressed, rosy-cheeked and sparkling and distinguished-looking in his beaver hat,' recalled the college chaplain, Robert Reed. 'He seemed to be going among people constantly. Every day you would see him walking on the campus with one of the fellows, chatting and laughing. He had a keen sense of humour and his chuckle and spontaneous laughter were very contagious.'6

The ridicule, however, continued. During his first year, Buchman reckoned, he was probably the most unpopular man on campus. Some of the students reacted sharply both to his earnestness and to what they felt were his puritanical attitudes, and he was nicknamed 'Pure John', a jibe derived from a contemporary cartoon figure. He became accustomed to seeing 'Pure John - 99 per cent pure' scrawled on vacant sign-boards; he was guyed in the college revue, caricatured in the college magazine.

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