But the quest of the committee like that of Diogenes proved a failure.

After two attempts and two repulses the committee were not disposed to invite the humiliation of a third refusal and must have listened with no little relief, to this blunt summary of the situation by Beriah Green, who was one of the six.

"If there is not timber amongst ourselves," quoth Green, "big enough to make a president of, let us get along without one, or go home and stay there until we have grown up to be men." The next day Green was chosen, and established in a manner never to be forgotten by his associates that the convention did possess "timber big enough to make a president of." Narrow as were the circumstances of many of the members, the convention was by no means destitute of men of wealth and business prominence.

Such were the Winslows, Isaac and Nathan, of Maine, Arnold Buffum, of Massachusetts, and John Rankin and Lewis Tappan, of New York.
Scholarship, talents, and eloquence abounded among the delegates.

Here there was no lack, no poverty, but extraordinary sufficiency, almost to redundancy.