* Victorian sentimentality was the product of “an unnatural union of poetry and Puritanism.” – Hugh Kingsmill, Anthology of Invective and Abuse, Dial, 1929
* “Throwin’ up his little finger” means doing a lot of drinking, in fact coming home drunk, in Legends and Stories of Ireland, by Samuel Lover, an 1831 collection published anew in 2006 by Nonsuch (nonsuch-publishing.com). In story “New potatoes,” in which Dublin potato-seller Katty complains to herring-monger Sally of her Mike, who had come home drunk: He “was done to a turn,” she said, “like a mutton-kidney.”
* The word “dickens” = devil. My mother and her mother knew that when they called a kid “that little dickens” of said, “Isn’t he (or she) the dickens?” Thus James H. Montgomery, of Austin TX, translator of Don Quixote. In TLS letters 3/16/07.
* Time Mag worried about a coming ice age in its Nov. 13, 1972 issue. And again in its Jun. 24, 1974 issue. So did Newsweek on April 28, 1975 – “The Cooling World, by Peter Gwynne: “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically” etc.
Blithe Spirit 