1 note
[Note 146.6] "With faces inches five and ten" :- The context suggests that this means with long faces; i.e. downcast or despondent.
[Note 146.9] "Merchants smiling at each door" :- The railway station was one of the few places that the poor could encounter the rich and earn money as boot-blacks, hawkers, newspaper sellers etc. [Ref. Richards & McKenzie; The Railway Station: A Social History]
[Note 146.11] "Your loving husbands can get down, In one short fleeting hour from town":- suggests that the railway was being used in conjunction with the ferries to enable businessmen to commute between their homes in fashionable Dunoon and their offices in Glasgow
[Note 146.10] "Waging a real hot-mutton strife" :- The context suggests that this means a heated argument.
[Note 146.12] "street rubinis" :- Giovanni Battista Rubini (7 April 1794 - 3 March 1854) was an Italian tenor, one of the most famous singers in Europe in the 1820s to 1840s. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Rubini]. Singers and other entertainers busking in the streets were a common sight in the mid 19th century.