Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/178

( 166 ) CHAPTER VIII.

PENNYLOAF CANDY.

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, how 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