'How much sorry?' asked Buchman. 'Do you know what remorse is?'

'That's being sorry and then doing it again,' said Victor.

'Then what do you think you need?' asked Buchman.

'Repentance.'

'What's that?'

'Oh, that's when a fellow's sorry enough to quit!'

Buchman began to tell the boy about a companion who always understood, so interesting that people never wanted to run away from him. 'I know who that is,' said Victor, 'that's Christ. I'd like to be his friend, but I don't know how.'

Buchman talked about how to get rid of sin which always had a big 'I' in the middle. 'Where should we go to do that?'

'On our knees,' said Victor, and when, later, they knelt together, he prayed, 'Lord, manage me, for I can't manage myself.'

Walking back to the camp, he said to Buchman, 'It's as if a lot of old luggage has rolled away. I must go and tell my friends.'9

From St Stephen's College, Delhi, a year later, Victor wrote to Buchman, 'With the help of God I will do the duty assigned to me since that memorable day at Roorkee.' As for Buchman, he used Victor's definitions of remorse and repentance for the rest of his life.

Buchman revelled in the novelty of India's sights and sounds. He wrote to his mother of the women 'washing their pots of bright brass in the stream, dressed in scarlet, picturesque in the mellow saffron twilight' and reassured her that the food was 'excellent; I never once suffered on account of it', and train travel 'more comfortable than at home'.10 To Dan he described the Taj Mahal, the festival of Diwali and a visit to a monkey temple. By now he was eager to return home, but he was planning first to visit the main focus of American missionary effort, China.

Eddy, who was himself to be in China the following year, was at first opposed to Buchman's visiting there,11 feeling perhaps that his direct methods might make enemies for himself. He left him with only a loan of $100 and a return ticket to Seattle. But Buchman was determined to go, and an invitation arrived from the committee in China which was sponsoring Eddy's visit. Eddy, on his way back to the United States, seems to have changed his mind. 'The more I think of it, the more I think what a unique work you have done,' he wrote from Aden. 'Talk over the whole question of permeating our China campaign with personal work. It is the forgotten secret of the Church.'12

In February 1916 Buchman sailed for Canton. His effect there proved to be such that Eddy cancelled the $100 loan and declared himself ready to meet another $400 of Buchman's expenses.

The YMCA Secretary for South China, George Lerrigo, spoke of Buchman's 'wonderful directness' and how 'he came to us just as an old friend … Every man he touched was a key man, and you can realise what this will mean for our work;13 while his visit to Shanghai 'promised large and permanent results'.14 At Canton the US Asiatic Fleet was in. He met many of the men and the result was the creation in several ships and ports of what the seamen called 'Buchman Clubs'.*

(* Buchman found such a club still functioning in the Philippines two years later.)

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