"Windy City" on web; Piece de resistance (1789); Roti

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

"WINDY CITY" ON WEB

   My latest "Windy City" findings are on the web (www.orionjeweb.com), on that "Chicago" guy's page:


  Subj:    Re: Windy City Myth
  Date:    9/7/2003 4:06:43 PM Eastern Daylight Time
  From:    "carljweber" <carljweber at email.msn.com>
  To:    <Bapopik at aol.com>
  Cc:    <gcohen at umr.edu>
  Sent from the Internet (Details)

Barry
Thanks for the scans. Here's what I've come up with.

Carl
orionjeweb.com


   I have to tell him a few things, such as that COMMENTS ON ETYMOLOGY is not an ADS publication.  But it's OK.
   The big question here is, why isn't this on the Chicago Public Library's web page?  Why isn't it on the Newberry Library's web page?  Why isn't it on the Chicago Historical Society's web page?
   Why does the CPL's web page continue to state something (the NEW YORK SUN 1893 World's Fair myth) it knows is not true?
   Why, seven years after I gave my papers (for free, of course) to the CHS, do I not even get a kind word, from anyone, ever?
   We're all waiting for ProQuest's digitized CHICAGO TRIBUNE, due any day now.  But what I've gone through all these years, without a single kind word, shouldn't happen to a dead cow.


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PIECE DE RESISTANCE

   Ah, the _piece de resistance_.  Merriam-Webster has 1839?  OED has 1797 in parens.
   From "drama" on Literature Online (LION):


Cumberland, Richard, 1732-1811 [Author Record]
The imposters (1789) 203Kb
THE IMPOSTORS: A COMEDY. PERFORMED AT THE THEATRE ROYAL DRURY LANE. 202Kb
Found 1 hit:
Main text 195Kb
ACT I. 32Kb
...table; plain Dorothy is the piece de resistance at the foot...

(More detail below--ed.)
L. Janus.
Hold there, friend Jack! if we are / both to play the same game, he that's first up / may chance to spoil the other's hand. /

Polyc.
Content yourself about that, and tho' / [325] you are Harry Singleton every where else, you / shall be Lord Janus here, and have all your privileges / of being first serv'd; then I hope your /

[Page 13]
humble servant may have leave to help himself: / Fair Eleanor is the dish of dainties at the head of / the table; plain Dorothy is the piece de resistance / at the foot of it. /

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ROTI

   Merriam-Webster has 1919 for "roti."  OED has 1920.
   I noticed an article about East Indians in Trinidad in the July 1907 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.  I was at NYU yesterday, and announced that I'd have an antedate within a few minutes.  I'd just have to go upstairs and check a few pages.  This is an important food; NYC now has many restaurants for Carbibbean/West Indian food.
   I checked the NYU shelves.  Every volume of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC was there--every one _except_ 1907.  I looked at every desk.  Nowhere.  Nothing is ever easy.
   So now I'm at Columbia.  It has the 1907 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.  "Roti" isn't there.
   I guess we'll have to wait for THE GLEANER project on newspaperarchive.com.