As winter drew near he was again urged to find a warmer climate, and his doctors suggested the dry South-Western desert, friends in Tucson, Arizona, rented a house around which the cactus, sage and cottonwood stretched for miles up through the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains. Below, the ground dropped away to a night-time view of the desert studded with the thousands of lights of the fast-growing city of Tucson.

Here he could restore his strength while keeping in touch with developments around the world and receiving a stream of visitors. He wrote to one friend, 'I wish you could see the scene, as on one side I look upon an expanse of cacti - some are two hundred years old - and on the other upon an orange, lemon and kumquat grove ... Beside the house there are cypress trees, and beyond all, the mountains with a look of the most beautiful parts of Greece. It is an ample place and I have thirty people staying with me. I never felt weary for one moment, and day after day there is sunshine galore.'2 He enjoyed his first months there so much that generous friends bought it to be his winter home.

The house at Tucson gave Buchman scope for the hospitality he loved to offer. As in the old days he created an atmosphere of concentrated concern for individuals, starting with the Mexican gardener, an embittered young man whom he took on with the house. From time to time he would be absent for a day or two. Buchman accurately diagnosed a drinking problem and said that if the young man, Arnold, was to do the gardening he would have to stop drinking. This produced an absence of several weeks during which, instead of hiring another man, the household looked after the garden as best they might. Buchman was more interested in Arnold than in the fate of the roses and citrus trees.

Arnold eventually returned. Buchman had him in for coffee and cake and told him about his own work. At the end Buchman gave him a notebook. 'What will I do with this?' asked Arnold. Someone told him that the change in his own life had started with writing down everything that did not match up to the four absolute moral standards. 'Well, then,' said Arnold, 'I'd better have two notebooks.'

Arnold told his father about these discoveries, and his father's even more acute drinking problem was cured. When he brought his wife to lunch, she said, 'I hope we act properly - my husband and I haven't been out to a meal together for twenty years.' After that the father came regularly to prune the hundred rose trees round the house and later got a job as gardener at the city hospital.

One night the local plumber, an agnostic, brought his rebellious teenage son to dinner and held forth about his agnosticism. When the meal was over Buchman said to the son, 'I usually thank God for a meal after we've eaten it. However, today I think we'll all sing "For he's a jolly good fellow".' The son became a frequent visitor.

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