Diana Oldboy, daughter of the colonel. She marries Harman.
Jessamy, son of the colonel and Lady Mary. An insufferable prig.—Bickerstaff, Lionel and Clarissa.
Oldbuck (Jonathan), the antiquary, devoted to the study and accumulation of old coins and medals, etc. He is sarcastic, irritable, and a woman-hater; but kind-hearted, faithful to his friends, and a humorist.—Sir W. Scott, The Antiquary (time, George III.).
An excellent temper, with a slight degree of subacid humor; learning, wit, and drollery, the more poignant that they were a little marked by the peculiarities of an old bachelor; a soundness of thought, rendered more forcible by an occasional quaintness of expression—these were the qualities in which the creature of my imagintion resembled my benevolent and excellent friend.—Sir W. Scott.
The merit of The Antiquary as a novel rests on the inimitable delineation of Oldbuck, that model of black-letter and Roman-camp antiquaries, whose oddities and conversation are rich and racy as any of the old crusted port that John of the Girnel might have held in his monastic cellars.—Chambers, English Literature, ii. 586.
Oldcastle (Sir John), a drama by Anthony Munday (1600). This play appeared with the name of Shakespeare on the title-page.
Old Sledge. Game of cards that, played at the “Settlemint”—(a group of log huts) among the Tennessee mountains, has a fatal fascination for Josiah Tait, who loses to a former suitor of the woman he has married everything he owns. The property is restored through the unexpected magnanimity of the winner, and the playing of Old Sledge becomes a lost art at the “Settlemint.”—Charles Egbert Craddock, In the Tennessee Mountains (1884).
Oldworth, of Oldworth Oaks, a wealthy squire, liberally educated, very hospitable, benevolent, humorous, and whimsical. He brings up Maria, “the maid of the Oaks” as his ward, but she is his daughter and heiress.—J Burgoyne, The Maid of the Oaks (1779).
Ole ’Stracted, a superannuated negro, formerly a slave, whose fancy is to wait in a hut on the old plantation for his master’s return. He was “sold South” forty years before, and his young master promised to go down next summer and buy him back. The poor fellow has saved in these years twelve hundred dollars to pay for his freedom. Unknown to himself or to them, his son and daughter-in-law minister to him in his last moments. He has put on his clean shirt, sure that “young marster” will come to-day. Rising to his feet he cries out:
“Heah de one you lookin’ for, Marster! Mymy—heah’s Little Ephrum!”