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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In 'The Angel and the Demon: A Tale,' T. S. Arthur crafts a compelling narrative that delves into the duality of human nature, exploring the persistent conflict between virtue and vice. Through rich, descriptive prose and a moralistic framework common to 19th-century American literature, Arthur illustrates the protagonist's struggle against both external and internal demons. This allegorical work not only reflects the era's fascination with moral lessons and spiritual redemption but also engages with the reader on an emotional level, making them ponder the choices that shape their humanity. T. S. Arthur, a prominent figure in the American literary scene of the 19th century, was known for his advocacy of moral improvement through storytelling. His experiences working in various capacities, including as a journalist and editor, likely informed his perspective on societal vices and virtues. Arthur's extensive oeuvre reflects his belief in literature's power to elevate the human spirit, and 'The Angel and the Demon' epitomizes this mission, revealing his commitment to social reform through narrative. This timeless tale is a must-read for those interested in the complexities of morality and the human psyche. Readers will find themselves drawn into a richly woven story that provokes thought while providing an engaging reading experience. Arthur's narrative not only entertains but also encourages self-reflection, making it a significant addition to any literary collection. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Angel and the Demon: A Tale
Table of Contents
Introduction
In The Angel and the Demon: A Tale, T. S. Arthur distills the ceaseless contest between conscience and appetite into a clear, intimate drama, inviting readers to watch how a single life is bent—gently by kindness, firmly by duty, and incessantly by temptation—until the quiet decisions of ordinary days reveal whether the angelic impulse toward compassion and self-command can withstand the insinuating pull of pride, pleasure, and expediency, while the surrounding social world amplifies each influence so that the stakes extend beyond the self to family, community, and the moral texture of everyday life.
A work of moral and domestic fiction by the prolific nineteenth-century American author and editor T. S. Arthur, this tale belongs to the reform-minded literature that flourished in the mid-nineteenth century. Arthur wrote for, and helped shape, a broad popular readership through magazines and affordable volumes that circulated widely at the time. The story’s world is the familiar sphere of ordinary households and workplaces, where ethical choices appear in practical, day-to-day situations. Within that context, the book advances the didactic yet sympathetic sensibility for which Arthur was known, aligning narrative interest with the improvement of character and the welfare of society.
Without relying on sensational spectacle, the premise unfolds from a recognizably human crossroads: a protagonist faces pressures that test integrity, self-restraint, and compassion. The title’s angel and demon signal not literal apparitions but moral forces—tendencies within the self and influences in the environment—that pull toward generosity and responsibility on the one hand, and toward self-indulgence or neglect on the other. Arthur traces how seemingly small choices accumulate consequences, shaping reputation, relationships, and livelihood. The experience offered is straightforward and earnest, favoring clarity over ambiguity, and guiding readers through a sequence of incidents designed to illuminate interior struggle through outward action.
Arthur’s voice is measured and exhortative, combining narrative momentum with an explicit ethic of care. The style is accessible, with scenes grounded in domestic detail and conversations that reveal motive and resolve without ornament or irony. Readers can expect a tone that is sober, sympathetic, and persuasive rather than cynical or experimental. The pacing tends toward short, illustrative episodes that build a moral arc. While the author does not hide his didactic aims, the tale’s appeal lies in the immediacy of its situations and the emotional legibility of its conflicts, offering a study in how everyday choices either nurture or erode one’s better nature.
Central themes include personal accountability, the formative power of habit, and the social contagion of example—how the behavior of peers, employers, neighbors, and family can elevate or corrode a wavering will. The book also probes the interplay between private conscience and public consequence, suggesting that character is both a personal achievement and a communal trust. Readers will find reflections on duty, kindness, prudence, and the costs of evasion. The angel figure embodies conscience, patience, and self-control; the demon signifies rationalization, vanity, and ease. Arthur’s treatment asks how one sustains virtue when immediate gratifications appear harmless, and when the price of endurance feels solitary.
For contemporary readers, the narrative raises durable questions: What kinds of influences do we admit into our lives, and how do they accumulate into character? How does a culture reward moral steadiness, and where does it subtly penalize it? Though rooted in the concerns of its century, the book’s examination of attention, temptation, and responsibility speaks to modern pressures—workplace shortcuts, social approval, and the constant invitation to distraction. Its candor about consequence may invite reflection on how values are formed in families and communities, and on the patience required to change course once a pattern of choices has begun to harden.
Approached as both literature and cultural document, The Angel and the Demon offers a window onto the moral rhetoric of its era and a compact guide to the stakes of ordinary conduct. Readers who value clear ethical through-lines, domestic realism, and a persuasive narrative conscience will find the tale engaging and clarifying. Those interested in the history of reformist writing will recognize its alignment with the period’s popular didactic mode. Read with attention to its aims, it offers less a puzzle than a mirror—an invitation to consider the forces we heed, the habits we cultivate, and the community that our choices quietly build.
Synopsis
The Angel and the Demon: A Tale presents a domestic narrative structured around two opposing impulses, figuratively described as an angel of unselfish affection and a demon of selfish appetite. Set in a mid-nineteenth-century American town, the story opens with scenes of ordinary prosperity and quiet domestic order. The narrator adopts a plain, observational tone, highlighting how common amusements and minor indulgences seem harmless at first. This framing introduces the central tension: the gradual influence of habit on character. Rather than offering abstract argument, the book develops its theme through incidents that allow readers to watch the contest between inward guidance and outward temptation unfold.
The tale centers on a young household enjoying modest comfort and hopeful prospects. The husband is industrious and sociable; the wife is steady, affectionate, and attentive to the wellbeing of their home. Early episodes show companions drawing the husband into convivial gatherings that offer relief from routine. The scenes are not violent or dramatic; they emphasize familiarity and ease, suggesting how small choices feel justified. The narrator confines judgment to the natural consequences of actions, letting the reader observe changes in tone, punctuality, and attention to duty. Domestic warmth serves as the quiet counterweight to public amusements that promise cheer and recognition.
As the narrative advances, the influence of the demon is depicted through incremental shifts: later evenings, neglected tasks, and subtle evasions. The angel acts through conscience, affection, and the stabilizing presence of home. Conversations between husband and wife convey concern without accusation and show how persuasion can sometimes steady a wavering purpose. A few minor losses and disappointments enter the story, not as catastrophes, but as signals that the balance is tipping. The author contrasts the brightness of the hearth with the noisy welcome of the public room, allowing the reader to mark how each place forms habit, strengthens desire, and directs attention.
A broader social backdrop emerges through neighbors, employers, and acquaintances who comment, advise, or entice. A business partnership shows strain when punctuality and reliability falter. Public lectures and pamphlets on temperance circulate, and conversations in shops and parlors register a community debating personal liberty, duty, and reform. The protagonist shifts uneasily between roles, seeking to keep both sociable standing and domestic peace. He gives assurances, makes partial resolves, and sometimes keeps them, only to relax again under old influences. These cycles, recounted plainly, illustrate how intention alone may not suffice when routines reinforce the very impulses one means to resist.
Consequences gather weight: expenses increase, opportunities slip, and tensions at home press more sharply on daily life. An illness in the household and an anxious vigil focus attention on what truly sustains comfort and trust. The wife consults a thoughtful friend, who counsels patience joined with firmness, and she adopts quieter strategies that support responsibility without harshness. Meanwhile, the narrative shows how public amusements depend on keeping patrons willing, familiar, and at ease, indirectly revealing the interests that benefit from repeated custom. The contrast is presented without denunciation, emphasizing instead how patterns, once settled, shape expectation and narrow the space for prudent choice.
A turning point arrives with an incident that makes private missteps public and compels an immediate reckoning. The event disrupts routine, disturbs self-concealment, and brings companions to the foreground, some urging evasion, others urging reform. Pressed by circumstances, the protagonist confronts the limits of intention and the need for external support. The story describes a concrete proposition for change and the conditions that would make it credible, focusing on accountability, association, and altered habit. Each party in the household must adjust stance and expectation, as the contest between the angel’s quiet claim and the demon’s familiar appeal reaches a critical moment.
In parallel, the book sketches other cases to illuminate the main theme: a neighbor who declined early temptations and prospered; another who delayed too long and faced heavier losses. These brief portraits supply contrast without diverting attention from the central story. Discussions of law, custom, and voluntary pledges consider how communities can either discourage or disguise harmful habits. The narrator refrains from prescribing a single remedy, instead showing how different measures suit different dispositions. This comparative method underlines the practical scope of the tale: it examines not only a household's inner struggle but also the social arrangements that influence personal constancy.
The closing movement follows a gradual recalibration of daily life. Trust, once shaken, is shown to be rebuilt through consistent action, measured speech, and renewed attention to ordinary duties. The narrative marks small milestones rather than sudden transformations, observing how steady routine either loosens or tightens the hold of appetite. Business prospects, neighborhood regard, and domestic serenity shift accordingly, and the characters accept that improvement brings new responsibilities alongside relief. Without dramatizing outcomes, the tale emphasizes sequence and cause, tracing how choices taken in quiet hours preserve what momentary excitements often imperil. The effect is cumulative and grounded in recognizable experience.
Overall, The Angel and the Demon: A Tale conveys a clear message about the continual contest between self-command and self-indulgence, and the roles family and community play in that struggle. Its central claim is practical: character is formed by repeated choices inside familiar routines, and supportive ties help good intentions hold. By presenting ordinary scenes, modest trials, and carefully observed consequences, the book argues that benevolent affections are strengthened by thoughtful habit, while careless indulgence narrows freedom. The synopsis underscores the work’s steady, domestic emphasis, its sequential development of cause and effect, and its encouragement toward patient reform grounded in everyday life.
Historical Context
Set in the mid-nineteenth-century United States, The Angel and the Demon unfolds in the parlors, lecture rooms, and boardinghouses of rapidly expanding Northeastern cities—places like Philadelphia, where T. S. Arthur lived and published, and New York and Boston, hubs of reform and novelty. Gaslit streets, horse-drawn omnibuses, rail timetables, and telegraph wires formed the infrastructure of a new urban middle class whose domestic life and moral anxieties animate Arthur’s tale. Evangelical Protestantism, voluntary associations, and a booming print market supplied the cultural air the characters breathe. The story mirrors a society fascinated by unseen forces and new sciences, yet worried about fraud, vice, and threats to the household.
The work most directly reflects the rise of Modern Spiritualism, which began in 1848 in Hydesville, New York, when Kate and Maggie Fox reported "rappings" they attributed to spirits. Within a few years, trance mediums, public séances, and table-turning spread across New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. Andrew Jackson Davis—publishing Nature’s Divine Revelations (1847) and The Great Harmonia (from 1850)—gave the movement a philosophical frame. Specialized newspapers such as the Spiritual Telegraph (New York, 1852) and Banner of Light (Boston, 1857) claimed national readerships. The Davenport Brothers (from 1854) popularized rope-tying spirit-cabinet exhibitions; Cora L. V. Scott (Cora Hatch) delivered widely attended trance lectures; and Daniel Dunglas Home attracted elite attention in the mid-1850s. Skeptics responded: Michael Faraday’s 1853 experiments, reported in London and reprinted in American papers, explained table movement by unconscious muscular action. After 1861, Civil War bereavement intensified demand for spirit communication; contemporary accounts and later memoirs described Mary Todd Lincoln hosting séances in the White House with mediums such as Nettie Colburn Maynard. P. T. Barnum’s The Humbugs of the World (1865) lampooned spiritualist frauds, while William H. Mumler’s spirit photography (Boston, 1860s) dramatized the era’s credulity. Arthur’s tale, appearing amid this ferment, stages the séance room as a moral battleground: the “angel” embodies conscience, piety, and domestic steadiness; the “demon” appears as charlatanism and the addictive thrill of spirit contact. By mapping private rooms and public halls where such practices flourished, the narrative echoes the movement’s geography and its ethical controversies, warning readers how spiritual novelty could mask exploitation and imperil the family economy.
Temperance agitation formed a second, pervasive historical backdrop. The American Temperance Society (1826) coordinated nationwide reform; the Washingtonian movement (1840) modeled peer-supported recovery; and the Maine Law (1851), championed by Neal Dow, inaugurated statewide prohibition, provoking the Portland Rum Riot in 1855. These efforts linked alcohol to domestic ruin and workplace instability, themes Arthur championed in reform fiction. Although The Angel and the Demon centers on occult delusions rather than liquor, it mirrors temperance logic: susceptibility to sensation—whether the glass or the séance—threatens household order and middle-class self-mastery. Arthur’s readers would have recognized the tale’s moral grammar as continuous with mid-century campaigns for sobriety.
Mesmerism and the borderlands of science also shaped the milieu. Franz Mesmer’s eighteenth-century “animal magnetism” returned in American lecture circuits of the 1830s–1840s through figures such as John Bovee Dods, while James Braid’s 1843 formulation of “hypnotism” sought a physiological basis. Claims of magnetic healing and clairvoyance blurred with spiritualist trancing. Investigations multiplied: Faraday’s 1853 tests on table-turning, American medical society debates, and popular demonstrations that conflated therapy with spectacle. The book engages this environment by portraying trances as manipulable and morally hazardous—not scientific breakthroughs but techniques that render subjects suggestible, invert household authority, and enable impostors to monetize illness, grief, and credulity.
Women’s reform and the contested boundaries of domestic authority inform the narrative’s social stakes. The Seneca Falls Convention (1848), led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, and the Worcester women’s rights meeting (1850) publicly challenged coverture; New York’s Married Women’s Property Acts (1848, 1860) incrementally expanded wives’ control over earnings and estates. At the same time, many mediums were women, gaining a rare platform in mixed audiences. Philanthropic networks—such as the New York Female Moral Reform Society (founded 1834)—organized protective sisterhoods. Arthur’s “angel” figure resonates with these realities: she channels a reforming, protective domestic power while the tale warns how predatory mediums could exploit women’s property, reputations, and spiritual longings.
Urbanization and the market revolution supplied the channels through which enthusiasm and fraud alike circulated. The U.S. urban share grew from roughly 6% (1820) to about 20% (1860), while railroad mileage expanded from approximately 9,000 miles (1850) to over 30,000 (1860). Samuel Morse’s telegraph linked cities beginning in 1844 (“What hath God wrought”), cultivating metaphors of distant, invisible communication that spiritualists appropriated. Cheap print—steam presses, stereotype plates, and aggressive distribution by Philadelphia houses like T. B. Peterson & Brothers—put moral tales on center tables. Arthur’s Home Magazine (launched 1852) trained a national audience to read domestic fiction as social counsel, the same audience his séance cautionary narrative addresses.
The Civil War (1861–1865) created a landscape of mourning that amplified both spiritualist practice and its critics. With an estimated 620,000 dead, many without identified graves, families sought consolation in messages from beyond. Newspapers like Banner of Light printed wartime “spirit communications”; private circles multiplied. William H. Mumler’s spirit photographs, emerging in Boston in the early 1860s and prosecuted for fraud in New York in 1869—with P. T. Barnum testifying—symbolized a market in grief. Arthur’s tale reflects this economy of loss: it depicts channels through which bereavement can be commercialized and family savings siphoned, countering with a model of sober remembrance anchored in religion, prudence, and community oversight.
As social and political critique, the book exposes a volatile marketplace of belief that thrived amid weak regulation, rapid urban growth, and mass bereavement. It indicts entrepreneurial imposture that targets women and the middle class, aligning with reform-era concerns about domestic security, property rights, and public morality. By juxtaposing the “angel” of conscientious restraint against the “demon” of sensation and deceit, Arthur challenges speculative cures, unlicensed healers, and fee-driven mediums, and by extension the broader commercialization of private sorrow. The narrative argues for rational religion, civic vigilance, and temperate self-governance as remedies to mid-century injustices—credulity exploited, households destabilized, and grief converted into profit.
The Angel and the Demon: A Tale
PREFACE
We think few mothers can read this volume without being struck with the great importance of care in regard to the dispositions and moral qualities of those into whose hands they place their children. There are sad disorders in society at the present time, and influences of a baleful character at work: above all things, let tender, innocent children be kept wholly beyond their sphere. In but rare cases should there be a delegation of the mother’s duties: extreme ill health is, perhaps, the only excuse for such delegation; but when it is made, let the nurse or governess be of known pure life and firm integrity. There should be no guess-work here; no trusting of a stranger, unless under the amplest testimonials from known parties; for wrong done to childhood is, too often, wrong done for the whole life. But we can only hint here at what we have endeavored to illustrate in the present volume.
THE ANGEL AND THE DEMON.
CHAPTER I.THE YOUNG GOVERNESS.
Mrs. Dainty’s health was poor, and her nerves delicate. It was no use, she said: the wear and tear of body and mind were more than she could stand. She must have a governess for the children. Mr. Dainty never opposed his wife in any thing, and so replied,—
“Very well, Madeline. Find your governess.”
But Uncle John—Uncle Johns, by-the-way, if they happen to be on the mother’s side, and old bachelors at that, are proverbially inclined to interfere with the home-management of their nieces—had, as usual, a word to say after he was alone with Mrs. Dainty.
“Don’t have any thing of the kind,” said he. “Be governess to your own children.”
“But I’m not equal to the task. It will kill me. See how thin and pale I am getting; and my nerves are in a terrible condition.”
“No wonder.”
“Why?”
“Dissipation[1] will destroy any woman’s nerves.[1q]”
“Dissipation! Why, Uncle John!”
“How many nights were you out last week?”
“Only three.”
“Only three! and each time until long after midnight. Dancing, late hours, hot suppers, and confectionery! No wonder your nerves are shattered! Such a life would kill me up in half a year.”
“Well, in my case, it is all that keeps me going. These social recreations, coming at intervals upon the enervating cares of domestic life, give new vitality to the exhausted system.”
“Filigree and nonsense!” replied Uncle John, impatiently. “You know better than to talk after this fashion.”
And so, for the time, the debate closed between them.
Meeting with no opposition from her husband, Mrs. Dainty proceeded at once to the work of procuring a governess. Among her fashionable friends she first made inquiry, but in no direction could she hear of the right individual. The qualifications were set forth at large. She must speak French with the true Parisian accent, and be able to teach that language; her knowledge of music must be thorough; she must be perfect in drawing and painting; her manners must be ladylike, her tastes refined: in a word, she must possess all the high accomplishments necessary to educate the children of a fashionable mother who was “in society.” She would greatly prefer a Frenchwoman.
At last she heard of a “French lady,” the daughter of a French count of the old régime, who was desirous of procuring the situation of governess in a family of “good standing.” An interview with this lady was held in the presence of Uncle John, who took occasion to ask her some questions about Paris, where he had spent several years. The stately manner and superior air which she assumed at the commencement of the interview gradually gave way under these questions, until madame showed considerable embarrassment.
“Your face is very familiar to me,” said Uncle John, finally. “I am sure I must have met you in Paris.”
“Monsieur is undoubtedly mistaken,” said the lady, with returning dignity.
“Perhaps so,” replied Uncle John. Then, in a more serious voice, he added, “But one thing is certain: you do not possess the qualifications desired in the governess of my nieces.”
The “French lady” offered no remonstrance, and asked for no explanations, but, with a flushed face, arose and retired.
“Better keep clear of counts’ daughters,” said Uncle John, as the applicant withdrew. “If you will have a governess for the children, procure one born and bred so near at home that you can readily learn all about her.”
Mrs. Dainty, who was particularly attracted by the appearance of the French lady, was not altogether pleased with Uncle John’s summary mode of despatching her, though a little startled at the idea of getting an impostor in her house.
What next was to be done? “Suppose we advertise?” said Mrs. Dainty.
“And have your bell-wire broken before ten o’clock the next morning,” replied Uncle John. “Take my advice, and wait a few days.”
“What good will waiting do? Unless we take some steps in the direction we wish to go, we shall never arrive at the end of our journey.”
“Good steps have been taken,” said Uncle John, cheerfully. “You have already made known to quite a number of your friends that you want a governess. The fact will not die; many will remember and speak of it, and somebody will happen to think of somebody who will just suit you.”
So Mrs. Dainty concluded to wait a few days, and see what time would bring forth.
On the third morning after the interview with the French count’s daughter, as Mr. and Mrs. Dainty and Uncle John sat talking together on the governess-question, the waiter opened the door, and said that a young woman wished to speak with Mrs. Dainty.
“Who is she, and what does she want?” inquired Mrs. Dainty, with an air of indifference, stroking the head of her King Charles spaniel, which, instead of her baby, occupied a comfortable position in her lap.
The servant went down to gain what information he could from the visitor touching her business with Mrs. Dainty, and returned with the information that she was an applicant for the situation of governess in the family, having been informed that the lady wanted a person in that capacity.
“Tell her to come up,” said Mrs. Dainty. “I wonder who she can be?” was added, as the servant withdrew.
Uncle John sat with his chin resting on the head of his cane, apparently so much engaged with his own thoughts as to be unconscious of what was passing.
In a few minutes the door reopened, and a young woman in plain attire, and of modest, almost timid aspect, entered. Mr. Dainty was standing with his back to the fire; Mrs. Dainty sat in her morning wrapper, with the King Charles spaniel still in comfortable quarters; and Uncle John remained in the same position, not stirring as the girl entered.
“Take a chair,” said Mrs. Dainty, with that supercilious indifference which imagined superiority often puts on toward imagined inferiors.
The girl flushed, trembled, and sat down, letting her eyes fall to the floor.
“What is your name?” asked Mrs. Dainty.
“Florence Harper,” replied the girl.
“Where do you live?”
“At No. — Elwood Street.”
“With whom?”
“My aunt.”
“Are your father and mother living?”
“No, ma’am.” Even Mrs. Dainty felt the sadness with which this reply was made.
“I am in want of a governess for my children,” said Mrs. Dainty, coldly; “but I hardly think you will suit.”
The young girl arose at once.
“Sit down.” Mrs. Dainty spoke with a slight impatience. The visitor resumed her chair, while Mr. Dainty kept his place before the fire, with his eyes fixed upon her curiously.
“Do you speak French?” inquired Mrs. Dainty.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What French school did you attend?”
“I was with Mr. Picot for six years.”
“Indeed!” There was a new interest in Mrs. Dainty’s voice.
“How is it in regard to your musical qualifications?” she continued.
“I will satisfy you, madam,” said the applicant, in a quiet but firm and dignified manner, “in regard to my ability to teach the various branches of a polite education, by references, if you desire them.”
“Oh, certainly! I shall expect references, of course. You don’t imagine that I would take an entire stranger into my house without the most rigid inquiries touching her character?”
Miss Harper arose.
“Do you wish,” said she, “to make any inquiries about me? Or have you concluded that I will not suit you?”
“You can leave your references,” replied Mrs. Dainty.
The names of two ladies were given. Mrs. Dainty had no acquaintance with them, but she knew their standing.
“That will do,” she replied.
“Shall I call again, or will you send me word if you desire to see me,” said the young girl.
“You may call.” Mrs. Dainty spoke in a very indifferent manner.
The visitor retired.
“I don’t like her,” said Mrs. Dainty.
“Why not?” inquired Uncle John, lifting, for the first time, his chin from the head of his cane.
“Too plebeian,” said Mrs. Dainty.
“Nothing but a countess will do for your young hopefuls,” retorted Uncle John. “Plebeian! There is the air of a lady in every movement. Take my advice, and learn all you can about her; and I’m mistaken if you don’t at once secure her services.”
Mrs. Dainty’s heart was set on having a governess; and, as no better opportunity offered for procuring one, she made inquiries about Miss Harper, and received encouraging information. A family council, consisting of herself, husband, and Uncle John, decided in the affirmative on the question of engaging the young lady, who, as she did not return to know whether her services would be desired or not, was sent for. Terms, duties, and the like being discussed and settled, Miss Harper, with many misgivings and strong reluctance, assumed the difficult and responsible position of governess in the family of Mrs. Dainty.
Three children were placed under her care: Agnes, the eldest daughter, now in her fourteenth year; Madeline, the second, eleven years old; and George, in his sixth summer. Many unwise remarks had been made about the young girl in the presence of the children; and when she assumed, formally, the charge of them, she perceived at a glance that they held her in contempt, and were not in the least inclined to obey her authority.
