In the social classification of the nether world—­a subject which 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 reflections bore this significance.  Bob was raised for ever above the rank of those who depend merely upon their muscles, even as Clara was saved from the dismal destiny of the women who can do nothing but sew.

There was, on the whole, some reason why John Hewett should feel pride in his eldest son.  Like Sidney Kirkwood, Bob had early shown a faculty for draughtsmansbip; when at school, he made decidedly clever caricatures of such persons as displeased him, and he drew such wonderful horses (on the race-course or pulling cabs), such laughable donkeys in costers’ carts, such perfect dogs, that on several occasions some friend had purchased with a veritable shilling a specimen of his work.  ‘Put him to the die-sinking,’ said an acquaintance of the family, himself so employed; ’he’ll find a use for this kind of thing some day.’  Die-sinking is not the craft it once was; cheap methods, vulgarising here as everywhere, have diminished the opportunities of capable men;