Old-Dad — Themes and Context

(0 User reviews) 62

In Category - Young Readers Enchanted Adventures

Authors: Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell, 1872-1958 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2015 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Fathers and daughters -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; United States -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 44,360

Reading time 193 min

Text sections 6

Old-Dad — Themes and Context can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 44,360 words, 3 hr 13 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 12.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Fathers and daughters -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #48990

An editorial note on Eleanor Hallowell Abbott's 'Old-Dad,' examining the author's use of stark dialogue, physical gesture, and ironic humor to depict a father-daughter relationship tested by scandal and a shipwrecked stranger.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg48990

Read the Text

Professor had said she looked like? But God knew it wasn't just her little face that was Apple Blossomy, but her little mind also, and the little glad gay heart of her! So fresh, so new, so virgin-sweet! By what foul chance, by what incalculable circumstance, had she blundered into _this_?"

Stripped of passion, stripped even of protest, stripped indeed of every human emotion except his dignity and his pain he pushed his [49] way blindly out through interminable heavy doors and breasted the winter night.

Then quite suddenly, stripped of every emotion _except_ pain, he swung around in his tracks, remounted the stairs, re-entered the President's office, and slamming the door be hind him, flung down even his dignity on the altar of his love.

"Miss Merriwayne!" he said. "This thing that you propose doing--cannot be done! I am engaged to Miss Bretton!"

For a single instant only, every knowledge, manner, poise, that John Burnarde had been born with, defied every knowledge, manner, poise, that Claudia Merriwayne had worked forty years to acquire.

Then reverting suddenly to the identical accent with which Claudia Merriwayne's mother was still lashing Claudia Merriwayne's father, doubtless, in the little far away North Kansas home, the College President opened her thin lips to speak.

"The thing--is already done,--Mr. Burnarde," she said. "Miss Bretton left town an hour ago--and with her paramour, I am told!" [50]

"With her--what?" cried John Burnarde.

"With her 'paramour,'" repeated the President coolly.

"The word is unfortunate," frowned Burnarde.

"So--is the episode," said the President.

With a little sharp catch of his breath John Burnarde stepped forward to the edge of the desk.

"You understand that I am going to marry Miss Bretton?" he affirmed with some incisiveness.

"Not in my college!" said the President. "Nor in any other college if I even so much as remotely gauge either the professional or the social exigencies of the situation." Emphatically, but by no means extravagantly, she drove her meaning home. "Do you dream for one single moment, Mr. Burnarde," she quizzed, "that any reputable college in the land would accept, or maintain on its faculty," she added significantly, "a man whose wife for reasons of moral obliquity had not been considered a safe associate for----"

"You mean----" interrupted John Burnarde. [51]

"Everything that I say," acquiesced the President, "and everything that I imply."

"That is your ultimatum?" questioned John Burnarde.

"That is my ultimatum!" said the President.

With the slightest perceptible tightening of his lips John Burnarde began to put on his gloves.

"Very fortunately," he said, "there are other professions in the world besides the teaching of English."

"Very fortunately," conceded the President. One side of her mouth lifted very faintly with the concession. "Yet somehow, Mr. Burnarde," she added hastily, "I do not seem to picture you as a--as an automobile salesman, for instance. Nor yet visualize that frail, lovely mother of yours relinquishing very easily her life-long ambitions for your deanship--which up to now, of course, has by no means seemed the improbable fruition of your distinguished services with us. Your mother," mused the President, "has doubtless made some sacrifices for you--in her time?" [52]

"Most mothers have!" snapped John Burnarde.

Roused snap for snap to his tone the President leaned forward suddenly.

"You're not the only man," she cried, "who has been both flouted and betrayed by Frivolity! Next time you choose----" Her cheeks flushed scarlet. "Next time you choose, perhaps you will choose more wisely, more consistently with your age and attainments! This mad infatuation is surely but the mood of a moment, the----" Recovering her self-control as quickly almost as she had lost it she sank back with typical statuesqueness into her throne-like Jacobean chair. "Surely, Mr. Burnarde," she asked in all sincerity, "you must admit that the--that the warning I have given you is at least--reasonable?"

"Absolutely reasonable!" said John Burnarde. "And absolutely damnable!" And turning on his heel he stalked from the room.

But even the winter night could not cool his cheeks now, nor the great pile of unread themes and forensics that he found awaiting him in his room, divert his tortured mind for one single second from the problems of a [53] lover to the problems of a professor. Somewhere indeed, he reasoned, among that white flare of papers a fresh stab of pain undoubtedly awaited him, a familiar handwriting strangely poignant, some little brand new bud of an idea forging valiantly upward through the clotted sod of academic tradition into the sunshine of acknowledged success, a purely prosy rhetorical question, perhaps, thrilled to its very interrogation mark by the sweet new secret hidden behind its formality!

Continue Reading →

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott opens Old-Dad with a confrontation that hinges on a single, unexpected nickname. When Daphne blurts out “Old-Dad” while confessing her expulsion, the word arrives “as though it were the only fluid phrase in a wooden-throated world.” The father’s response—a grin “like the painted grin on a sick clown’s face”—immediately undercuts the expected melodrama. Abbott favors abrupt, physical reactions over explanatory narration: the father snarls “like a startled animal,” then concerns himself with an overturned ink bottle. This preference for gesture and clipped dialogue over interior monologue defines the novel’s voice.

Diction and the Weight of a Nickname

The title itself is a product of crisis. Abbott does not explain the nickname; she lets it emerge from Daphne’s “stark lips” in a moment of extremity. Throughout the excerpts, characters speak in short, often interrupted sentences. Daphne’s stammered “I—I have been expelled from college!” is met not with anger but with a question about the boy’s appearance: “Blonde or brunette?” This tonal shift—from expected fury to absurd curiosity—is Abbott’s signature. She avoids florid description, instead letting the rhythm of halting speech convey tension. The father’s later quip about “assumed hair” versus “assumed names” continues the pattern: wit serves as a shield against emotional directness.

Physical Gesture as Emotional Signal

Abbott repeatedly uses small physical details to carry emotional weight. Daphne’s “small gloved hand fumbling desperately at the great muffly collar” and her father’s noticing that her shoulder “sags” because of a heavy suitcase—these observations replace explicit statements of feeling. The father’s question “And is your shoulder broken, too?” is absurdly gentle, yet it reveals his concern more effectively than a declaration. Later, when Daphne offers the Intruding Lady her father’s other hand, the gesture is both practical and symbolic: it acknowledges the stranger’s discomfort while reinforcing the father-daughter bond. Abbott trusts the reader to read these actions.

Setting as a Character in Dialogue

The Gulf island setting is rendered through sensory fragments rather than panoramic description. Abbott notes “the sallow glare of beach-grass and cactus thicket,” the “bright green cocoanut palms” that “clattered and fanned with at least the sound of coolness.” The heat and sharp shells are felt through the characters’ bodies: “The sun was hot! The sand was thick! The shells were very sharp!” This exclamatory style, almost childlike, mirrors Daphne’s perspective. The setting also drives plot—the broken launch engine strands the characters together, forcing interactions that might otherwise be avoided. Abbott uses the island as a pressure chamber for dialogue.

Ironic Humor and the Subversion of Expectation

Abbott’s humor often arises from mismatched expectations. The father’s first response to expulsion is not rage but a query about the boy’s hair color. Later, when the Intruding Lady expects outrage over her uninvited arrival, Jaffrey Bretton responds with mock advertisements and a placard-carrying butler. The lady’s “brown veil” and “brown hat” become props in a comic unmasking. Even Daphne’s anxiety about telling her “story” to the stranger is undercut by her father’s sharp “Tell her—what?” This pattern—serious revelations met with deflecting wit—suggests a world where direct emotion is too dangerous to voice. Abbott’s dialogue thus becomes a kind of choreography, with each character circling the truth.

Readers attentive to Abbott’s craft will notice how much is conveyed through what is not said. The gaps between speeches, the weight of a suitcase, the clatter of palm leaves—these details build a story that feels both light and tense. The novel rewards those who watch for the physical tells and the ironic asides that reveal character more reliably than any confession.

Years shelving books, I’ve noticed how often a father’s stubborn silence speaks louder than any argument. Old-Dad captures that ache in its clipped dialogue, the way a nod or a turned back carries the whole weight of love and ruin. That same hush, that hopeful, wary watchfulness, lingers in John Stevens' Courtship: A Story of the Echo Canyon War — Reading Companion, where a man’s courtship unfolds amid the faint, distant drum of trouble—a quieter kinship, findable only by those who listen closely.