ASIDE ON SIDESMEN
It is enjoyable to comment on those niceties of the Church's ritual which do not affect our immortal souls. They always arouse the hottest controversy, This matter of the sidesmen bowing to the altar at the elevation of the alms dish, for in- stance; the Duke of Devonshire, in his letter last week, thinks that this part of the service should be conducted in silence. 1 agree, though I could do without the bowing. But I was not thinking of the 'Eight o'clock.' I should have said I meant Sung Communion or Mattins, when a hymn is generally chosen at the offertory which gives the practised sideman time to take the collection, bring it to the chancel and return to his pew before the hymn is finished. If he mistimes it, the organist generally obliges with twiddly bits until be is back in his seat. It is the bowing which seems to me an inexplicable piece of ritualism. As to the 'Service of the Nine Colonels,' hands off Berkshire, where I live! We are just as democratic about it as they are in Derbyshire. I was trying to say, in a roundabout way, that I preferred Evensong according to the Book of Common Prayer.
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