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, is superior. Her soprano alone (a famous prima donna) would fill the house. Women throng the aisles to hear the tenor, and musical critics, hat in hand, and pad on hat, drop in to report the anthem and the offertory for the Monday morning press. In ecclesiastical position, it is needless to add, Saint Agatha's has always been above reproach. When did Saint Agatha's question a canon? When did she contend with a custom? When did she criticise a creed? Why should she contest a tradition? She accepts, she conforms, she prospers.