a knock on New York revisited

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

        About a year and a half ago, under the heading "a knock on New
York", I posted a remark by John Tierney in a then-recent New York
Times, saying (approximately) that Will Rogers had said that New
York would be a fine place, if they ever got it finished.  A witty
remark, and not more witty than true.  But I corrected Tierney's
attribution by quoting a well-told joke from the New York Commercial
Advertiser of June 21, 1828, in which a countryman from Connecticut
meets with various misadventures in the city, stumbling over
construction debris and the like, until he exclaims "New-York would
be an darnation fine place, if they ever get it done."  I speculated
at that time that probably the joke was old in 1828, and that there
was not doubt a clay tablet lying in the sands of Mesopotamia which
will be found to read "Nineveh will be a dang fine city, when they
get it finished."

I now have a bit of evidence that shows that another New Yorker of
the time had found the joke to be both new and memorable.  An
editorial in the New-York Mirror of November 2, 1833, grumbling about
the constant inconvenience of tearing down and building again,
concluded "Verily, the editor of the Commercial was right, when he
said, 'New-York would be a nation fine place, if they ever get it
done.'"  (P. 143, col. 3)  Unless the editor of the Commercial had
reprinted the joke, it seems that the editor of the Mirror was
quoting something he had read more than five years before, and had
been so struck by, that he remembered not only the joke, but also
where he had seen it.

Perhaps there is such a thing as a new joke.

Fred Shapiro: this belongs in your book.

GAT