Gradation in respectability in the matter of dress, from the point at which a man is unmistakably in his working-clothes to that in which he readily passes as a workman in his Sunday best, has furnished the means of some range in the experiment of church-going. From the first I have gone regularly to church. But appearing in the garb of a day-laborer in the fashionable churches of a great city is far removed as a matter of experience from attending the service of a village meeting-house. I am inclined to think that the latter would be the greater ordeal to a real workman. Country parishioners turn out on Sundays with an amazing show of dress, and one of their own number in flannel shirt and labor-stained clothing would be oddly conspicuous; and he would feel his peculiarity much more, I imagine, than if he found himself among persons whom he did not know on equal social footing. For me the case was different and was wholly artificial, but in going to church in the country, dressed in working clothes which had been carefully protected by overalls, and mended, and brushed, and cleaned to the utmost, I yet could but feel how intolerable to a workingman the actual situation would have been. To slip early into a quiet corner of the village church which was usually free, and then out again before most of the congregation had well started for the door, was a widely dissimilar thing from regularly attending service with your neighbors. In overalls and a “jumper,” a man is easily classified; without them, however plain may be the stamp upon him of attempted cleanliness, it is difficult to place him among a Sunday-dressed community, whether in the country or in town, unless he, too, is evidently in Sunday clothes. It is not, in its general application, a question of fashion; the cut of a man’s garments may be that of ten years back, or may be foreign to any fashion known, but his clothing must not bear the marks of toil, and must have the linen accompaniments which render, while they are worn, all manual labor difficult. If he would conform, a man must never worship in garments in which he could work. A want of conformity might quite possibly expose him to aggressive criticism and ridicule among his accustomed fellows. I never found it so myself in the country, where I always went to church in working clothes because I had no others, for never once was I made to feel the least embarrassment, while many times I wondered at the gracious courtesy which met me. But I was always a stranger, and had never to face companions of long standing. And so, as in many phases of my experiment, the unreality of my position marred, in large measure, the value of the result.