



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "_The kneeling people lifted their wet faces... But the
chancel was empty_"]





THE

SUPPLY AT SAINT AGATHA'S


BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS




_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_

BY

E. BOYD SMITH AND MARCIA OAKES WOODBURY





BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1896




Copyright, 1896,

BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD AND

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.


_All rights reserved._



_The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.




THE SUPPLY AT SAINT AGATHA'S.




At the crossing of the old avenue with the stream of present traffic,
in a city which, for obvious reasons, will not be identified by the
writer of these pages, there stood--and still stands--the Church of
Saint Agatha's.

The church is not without a history, chiefly such as fashion and sect
combine to record.  It is an eminent church, with a stately date upon
its foundation stone, and a pew-list unsurpassed for certain qualities
among the worshipers of the Eastern States.  Saint Agatha's has long
been distinguished for three things, its money, its music, and its
soundness.

When the tax-list of the town is printed in the daily papers once a
year, the wardens and the leading parishioners of Saint Agatha's stand
far upwards in the score, and their names are traced by slow, grimy
fingers of mechanics and strikers and socialists laboriously reading on
Saturday nights.

The choir of Saint Agatha's, as all the world knows,