so eminently adapts itself to the sportive and gracefully
picturesque mode of treatment--it will be convenient to
distinguish broadly, and with reference to males alone, the two
great sections of those who do, and those who do not, wear collars.
Each of these orders would, it is obvious, offer much scope to an
analyst delighting in subtle gradation. Taking the collarless, bow
shrewdly might one discriminate between the many kinds of neckcloth
which our climate renders necessary as a substitute for the nobler
article of attire! The navvy, the scaffolder, the costermonger, the
cab-tout--innumerable would be the varieties of texture, of fold,
of knot, observed in the ranks of unskilled labour. And among these
whose higher station is indicated by the linen or paper symbol, what
a gap between the mechanic with collar attached to a flannel shirt,
and just visible along the top of a black tie, and the shopman whose
pride it is to adorn himself with the very ugliest neck-encloser put
in vogue by aristocratic sanction For such attractive disquisition I
have, unfortunately, no space; it must suffice that I indicate the
two genera. And I was led to do so in thinking of Bob Hewett.

Bob wore a collar. In the die-sinking establishment which employed
him there were, it is true, two men who belonged to the collarless;
but their business was down in the basement of the building, where
they kept up a furnace, worked huge stamping-machines, and so on.
Bob's workshop was upstairs, and the companions with whom he sat,
without exception, had something white and stiff round their necks;
in fact, they were every bit as respectable as Sidney Kirkwood, and
such as he, who bent over a jeweller's table. To John Hewett it was
no slight gratification that he had been able to apprentice his son
to a craft which permitted him always to wear a collar. I would not
imply that John thought of the matter in these terms, but his