In England, that land of caste which is rigid enough to be cast iron, all men, with the exception of petty tradespeople, dress to match the vocations they follow.  In America no man stays put—­he either goes forward to a circle above the one into which he was born or he slips back into a lower one; and so he dresses to suit himself or his wife or his tailor.  But in England the professional man advertises his calling by his clothes.  Extreme stage types are ordinary types in London.  No Southern silver-tongued orator of the old-time, string-tied, slouch-hatted, long- haired variety ever clung more closely to his official makeup than the English barrister clings to his spats, his shad-bellied coat and his eye-glass dangling on a cord.  At a glance one knows the medical man or the journalist, the military man in undress or the gentleman farmer; also, by the same easy method, one may know the workingman and the penny postman.  The workingman has a cap on his head and a neckerchief about his throat, and the legs of his corduroy trousers are tied up below the knees with strings—­else he is no workingman.

When we were in London the postmen were threatening to go on strike.  From the papers I gathered that the points in dispute had to do with better hours and better pay; but if they had been striking against having to wear the kind of cap the British Government makes a postman wear, their cause would have had the cordial support and intense sympathy of every American in town.

It remains for the English clerk to be the only Englishman who seeks, by the clothes he wears in his hours of ease, to appear as something more than what he really is.  Off duty he fair1y dotes on the high hat of commerce.  Frequently he sports it in connection with an exceedingly short and bobby sackcoat, and trousers that are four or five inches too short in the legs for him.  The Parisian shopman harbors similar ambitions—­only he expresses them with more attention to detail.  The noon hour arriving, the French shophand doffs his apron and his air of deference.  He puts on a high hat and a frock coat that have been on a peg behind the door all the morning, gathers up his cane and his gloves; and, becoming on the instant a swagger and a swaggering boulevardier, he saunters to his favorite sidewalk cafe for a cordial glassful of a pink or green or purple drink.  When his little hour of glory is over and done with he returns to his counter, sheds his grandeur and is once more your humble and ingratiating servitor.

In residential London on a Sunday afternoon one beholds some weird and wonderful costumes.  On a Sunday afternoon in a sub-suburb of a Kensington suburb I saw, passing through a drab, sad side street, a little Cockney man with the sketchy nose and unfinished features of his breed.  He was presumably going to church, for he carried a large Testament under his arm.  He wore, among other things, a pair of white spats, a long-tailed coat and a high hat.  It was not a regular high hat, either, but one of those trick-performing hats which, on signal, will lie doggo or else sit up and beg.  And he was riding a bicycle of an ancient vintage!