105 Whistles

Sevillian choir boys dance prettily in the Cathedral on the festivals of Corpus Christi and the Immaculate Conception. In Chinese temples priests play on exotic little instruments. Hebrew cantors intone wailing dirges in their synagogs. But, thought perturbed members of the Maplewood Methodist Episcopal Church in Maiden, Mass., who ever heard of whistling in church?

The church was celebrating its 80th anniversary. Through the congregation circulated the same respectable, soberly-clad gentlemen who take up the Maplewood collection every Sunday. But today, every now and then one of these gentlemen would pucker his lips and, discreetly yet unmistakably, whistle!

Soon Pastor Duane B. Aldrich explained to his amazed, amused and scandalized flock: he had instructed the stewards to whistle every time a dollar bill or more was dropped in the plates. There had been 105 whistles.

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