8 NOVEMBER 1975, Page 5

Getting it right

Sir: May a New Yorker express her gratitude to The Spectator for Brendan Gill's 'No more jokes' (October 25). It was something that badly needed saying, on both sides of the Atlantic.

What a pity, therefore, that Mr Gill couldn't get the quotation from the Statue of Liberty poem right. It should read: "Give me your huddled masses yearning to breathe free ... I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

In any case, Mr Gill is correct in his assessment that New York will survive. We will even do better than that, though for the moment (to borrow another phrase from Emma Lazarus) the "wretched refuse" of America's "teeming shores" appears to be us!

Susan H. Llewellyn 41 Terenure Road West, Dublin 6, Eire