just too small

[George Thompson]

Here is a familiar expression that I don't see in HDAS or in Whiting &
Taylor's collection of American proverbs.

New York city at that time wasn't big enough to hold Josie Mansfield,
Jim Fisk and Stokes all at once.
Samuel A. Mackeever, Glimpses of Gotham and City Characters, N. Y.:
National Police Gazette, 1880, p. 18, col. 2  [Jim Fisk, the rascally
financier; Edward Stokes wound up shooting him.]

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.