Then Old Age said again, — Come, let us walk down the street together, — and offered me a cane, an eyeglass, a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. — No, much obliged to you, said I. I don’t want those things, and I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way and walked out alone; — got a fall, caught a cold, was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole matter.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
“The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” Atlantic Monthly (1858-05)
(Source)
Collected in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch. 7 (1858).