[The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]@TWC D-Link bookThe Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. CHAPTER VII 9/37
Talk about men, if you will, but spare the poor women. We have a brief description of seven stages of life by a remarkably good observer.
It is very presumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods.
Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own three periods of immaturity, complete development, and decline.
I recognize on OLD baby at once,--with its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a porringer,)--so does everybody; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his permanent ones.
Fifty or thereabouts is only the childhood, as it were, of old age; the graybeard youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now.
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