A few qutoations I googled up with spry + etext from public domain works on the web.

"I come from a modern country, where we have everything that money can buy; and with all our spry young fellows painting the Old World red, and carrying off your best actors and prima-donnas, I reckon that if there were such a thing as a ghost in Europe, we'd have it at home in a very short time in one of our public museums, or on the road as a show."

Oscar Wilde. The Canterville Ghost.

"A dog is of great use on a farm, and that is the reason a boy likes him. He is good to bite peddlers and small children, and run out and yelp at wagons that pass by, and to howl all night when the moon shines. And yet, if I were a boy again, the first thing I would have should be a dog; for dogs are great companions, and as active and spry as a boy at doing nothing. They are also good to bark at woodchuck-holes."

C. D. Warner. Being a Boy. 1877.

"Matthew is getting up in years, you know—he's sixty—and he isn't so spry as he once was. His heart troubles him a good deal."

Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne of Green Gables.

The last quotation seems to imply that Matthew once was spry, but when? At ten or fifty?