Buchman frequently invited to the campus what he called 'contagious' outside speakers like the evangelist Billy Sunday, the pioneer social worker Jane Addams and - despite opposition from some of his colleagues - Melinda Scott, a pioneer of the Catholic workers' movement who had taken up the cause of women workers in sweat-shops.

In 1912 he decided to set up a home on the campus where he could offer good food and a warm welcome. 'My plan', he wrote, 'would be to gather the men who do not have the advantage of friends, the lonely, the homesick, the discouraged, the tempted.'20

He invited Mary Hemphill, whom he had placed with various friends since the days of the hospice and whose son, David, he was putting through college, to come back to him as housekeeper and cook. 'The master of a great art,' Buchman described her later, 'a noble soul, a ready wit, a self-effacing team-mate …. The cooking of a good meal was her greatest delight.' Buchman also asked the college for extra facilities. 'I want to arrange for the extra room you wish,' replied the college President, Edwin Sparks. 'An organisation which can bring about an opening of college such as we have seen thus far is worthy of an entire dormitory if it wishes it.'21 Buchman duly took an apartment on College Avenue and, with the help of Mary's omelettes and oyster stews, used it to entertain a steady stream of visitors.

Particularly in view of the generosity of his table, it was a mystery to other members of the faculty how he managed to pay his bills, despite the fact that his salary finally rose to $3,000 a year with another $250 for expenses. The President's wife, Mrs Sparks, recalled the time when, travelling back to Penn State, Buchman got to within thirty miles of the campus but, with only twenty-six cents in his pocket, had not enough to pay for the bus fare. Then 'he just happened to meet Mr Sparks and, of course, Mr Sparks invited him to ride home in his car and gave him dinner on the way.'

Buchman was also, added Mrs Sparks, 'very generous with what he had, giving away his overcoat or anything if he thought someone else needed it worse than he did'. He frequently made loans to students with little expectation of ever seeing the money again. Yet, by some mysterious and rather irritating alchemy, he always seemed to have enough. Somewhat to Mrs Sparks' chagrin, he was also able to borrow large sums of money from the bank without security of any kind; whereas she, the President's wife, could not. 'There were times I would get so provoked with Buchman that I'd vow not to do another thing for him, although I always did,' she wrote later, and added that he impressed her 'as having the most faith in God of anyone I ever knew'.22

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