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Take the air   /teɪk ðə ɛr/   Listen
Take the air

verb
1.
Take a walk; go for a walk; walk for pleasure.  Synonym: walk.  "We like to walk every Sunday"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Take the air" Quotes from Famous Books



... a ... just to-day ... it comes over me ... the blood, you know ... it seems to go to my head suddenly, once in a while. It's like a ... it's horrible, too ... like an attack of dizziness! I suppose I'll have to ... at least, I think I'll have to take the air a bit. But it's nothing of importance, ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... finished, before sleeping, Harding and his companions went to take the air on the beach. It was eight o'clock in the evening; the night was magnificent. The moon, which had been full five days before, had not yet risen, but the horizon was already silvered by those soft, pale shades which might be called the ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... It's grown. And now, my bonny birds, Though you have disbelieved my words Thus far, take heed at last,— When you shall see the seed-time past, And men, no crops to labour for, On birds shall wage their cruel war, With deadly net and noose; Of flying then beware, Unless you take the air, Like woodcock, crane, or goose. But stop; you're not in plight For such adventurous flight, O'er desert waves and sands, In search of other lands. Hence, then, to save your precious souls, Remaineth but ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... good chance to observe her incubating habits. I was surprised at the frequent and long recesses that she took during school-hours. Every hour during the warmest days she was off from ten to twelve minutes, either to take the air or to take a bite, or to let up on the temperature of her eggs, or to have a word with her other family; I am at a loss to know which. Toward the end of her term, which was twelve days, and as the days grew cooler, she was not gadding ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs

... visitor to the parlour; but the moment he makes his appearance, these intruders fly at him with furious rage; and I have admired the sovereign indifference and contempt with which he seems to look down upon his puny assailants. When her ladyship drives out, these dogs are generally carried with her to take the air; when they look out of each window of the carriage, and bark at all vulgar pedestrian dogs. These dogs are a continual source of misery to the household: as they are always in the way, they every now and then get their toes trod on, and then there is a yelping on their part, and ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... Cereus, as nurse to the little Prince Demophoon. She treated him as if he were her own child, and allowed neither the king nor the queen to say whether he should be bathed in warm or cold water, or what he should eat, or how often he should take the air, or when he should be put to bed. You would hardly believe me, if I were to tell how quickly the baby prince got rid of his ailments, and grew fat, and rosy, and strong, and how he had two rows ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... all that's fine and fair, And the best of silk and satin to wear; And ride in a coach to take the air, And have a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... Egyptian Princess wished to take the air, she seated herself in a Palanquin, which was nothing but a comfortable chair, with poles at the sides, and her bearers, with the ends of the poles upon their shoulders, bore her gently and easily along, while an attendant with a threefold ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... slight of figure, small-boned. And her movements were lazy. Dressed carelessly—a gaping bodice, buttons missing, ugly, worn shoes, always looking a little slovenly—she charmed by her grace and youth, her gentleness, her instinctively coaxing ways. When she appeared to take the air at the door of her shop, the young men who passed used to look at her with pleasure: and although she did not bother about them, she noticed it none the less. Always then she wore that grateful and glad expression which is in the eyes of all women when they ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... Lennox[203] of our own; Why should we servile customs choose, And court an antiquated Muse? 80 No matter why—to ask a reason, In pedant bigotry is treason. In the broad, beaten turnpike-road Of hacknied panegyric ode, No modern poet dares to ride Without Apollo by his side, Nor in a sonnet take the air, Unless his lady Muse be there; She, from some amaranthine grove, Where little Loves and Graces rove, 90 The laurel to my lord must bear, Or garlands make for whores to wear; She, with soft elegiac ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... the Vosges Mountains a great big hare used to come out every evening to take the air at the foot of the Mont des Fourches. All the sportsmen of the neighbourhood tried their hands on that hare for a month, but not one of them could hit it. At last one marksman, more knowing than the rest, loaded his gun with some pellets of a consecrated wafer in addition to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... the princess not to let him be so unfortunate as to return without her. "Gentle Avenant," said she, "all the reasons you have laid before me, are very good, and I assure you, I would rather favour you than any other; but you must know, about a month since, I went to take the air by the side of a river, with my maids of honour; as I was pulling off my glove, I pulled a ring from my finger, which by accident fell into the river. This ring I valued more than my whole kingdom; whence you may judge how much I ...
— Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... from reaching it, but reflect the heat in such a manner, that from November to April it is almost insupportable. During this season, the inhabitants whose affairs do not oblige them to remain, fly to the higher and windward parts of the island; and the others take the air and their exercise very early in the morning and late in the evening. We who were shut up in the middle of the town, and from having been three months confined to a vessel of twenty-nine tons were much in need of exercise, could not but feel the personal inconveniences ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders

... promise were at once given, and the boys were told that at certain hours of the day they would have liberty to take the air in the courtyard below. ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... and watched by a butler and a footman at the summit of the steps and by a footman on the pavement and by the coachman on the box of the carriage. She carried a thick and lovely white shawl, and in this shawl was Lord Woldo and all his many and heavy responsibilities. It was his fancy to take the air thus, in the arms of a woman. He allowed himself to be lifted into the open carriage, and the door of the carriage was shut; and off went the two ancient horses, slowly, and the two adult fat men and the two mature spinsters, and the vehicle weighing about a ton; and Lord Woldo's morning ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett

... my hour. Chicot, my doctor, recommends regularity, and I feel my usual pain in my side. This is how I shall spend the evening," he added, looking at the clock. "At nine, we will settle the affairs of Monsieur le Grand. At ten, I shall be carried round the garden to take the air by moonlight. Then I shall sleep for an hour or two. At midnight the King will be here; and at four o'clock you may return to receive the various orders for arrests, condemnations, or any others I may have to give you, for the provinces, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... frequently the great-grandfather, or the great-great-grand-father of the family, for those natives live to a very great age. I have seen some of them not able to walk, without having any other distemper or infirmity than old age, so that when the necessities of nature required it, or they wanted to take the air, they were obliged to be carried out of their hut, an assistance which is always readily offered to the old men. The respect paid to them by their family is so great, that they are looked upon as the judges of all differences, and their ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz

... time in the water there, and sometimes came to the margin of the pool to take the air. One day, coming to the edge of the water, he continued uttering his voice in a heart-rending cadence and assumed himself to be a nightingale of a ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various

... they will be remediless in case of injury to themselves. They may travel on the Lord's day for all purposes of necessity or charity; and they may also take short walks in the public highway on Sundays, simply for exercise and to take the air, and even to call to see friends on such walks, without liability to punishment therefor under the statutes for the observance of the Lord's day, and they can recover damages for injuries ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... and devised The soft settee; one elbow at each end, And in the midst an elbow, it received, United yet divided, twain at once. So sit two kings of Brentford on one throne; And so two citizens who take the air, Close packed and smiling in a chaise and one. But relaxation of the languid frame By soft recumbency of outstretched limbs, Was bliss reserved for happier days; so slow The growth of what is excellent, so hard To attain perfection in this ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... the wind detained us till the 12th, when, though it was Sunday, we thought it proper to snatch the opportunity of a calm day. Raarsa accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which, he said, was his coach and six. It is, indeed, the vehicle in which the ladies take the air, and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way, in or out of the boat, for a woman, but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name, there is no seat, but an occasional ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... and for his funerary statuettes. He must also have tables for his meals; stools, chairs, a bed to lie upon, a boat and sledge to convey him to the tomb, and sometimes even a war-chariot and a carriage in which to take the air.[71] The boxes for canopic vases, funerary statuettes, and libation-vases, are divided in several compartments. A couchant jackal is sometimes placed on the top, and serves for a handle by which to take off the lid. Each box was provided with its own little sledge, upon which ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero

... dust, his night-cap on, He walks, an object new beneath the sun! The boys flock round him, and the people stare: } So stiff, so mute! some statue you would swear, } Stepped from its pedestal to take the air! } And here, while town, and court, and city roars, With mobs, and duns, and soldiers at their doors; Shall I, in London, act this idle part? Composing songs for fools to get by heart? The Temple late two brother sergeants saw, Who deemed each other ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope

... war." The gay young men are at the front, the idle young women knitting or nursing or helping the poor, and it is an adventure uncommon enough to be remembered to meet on the street a pretty young lady merely out to take the air, with hands in her muff and trotting in front of her the timorous dachshund, muzzled like a ravening tiger and looking at the world askance with ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... side to take the Air, My Horse threw me, which made me see For some convenient House to rest a while, And met with this, wherein I have slept this hour, And I believe had done so longer yet, Had not your ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne

... in my shop, and observing there was no one in the bazaar but the eunuch and myself, uncovered her face to take the air. I had never beheld any thing so beautiful. I became instantly enamoured, and kept my eyes fixed upon her. I flattered myself that my attention was not unpleasant to her; for she allowed me time to view ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.

... followed by a comfortable half-hour in the lounge, after which we decided to take the air until the arrival of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... the rosy. With permission of the chair, I shall leave you for a little, for I'd like to take the air. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... gridiron, it was the inhabitant of that bed-closet; and right glad was I the next day to get into a gallant row-boat, belonging to the commandant of the Canadian riflemen, rowed by a gallant crew, and take the air on the River Detroit, as well as the breezes on Bois Blanc Island. Bois blanc, in Western Canadian parlance, is the white wood tree, with which this island formerly abounded, and now converted into several ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... besides this habitual inclemency of the weather, which forbade out-door exercise nearly the whole year, it was a displeasure to walk in Venice on account of the stairways of the bridges; and the signora much preferred to wait till they went to the country in the autumn, when she always rode to take the air. The exceptions to her custom were formed by those after-dinner promenades which she sometimes made on holidays, in summer. Then she put on her richest black, and the Paronsina dressed herself in her best, and they both went to walk on the Molo, before the pillars of the lion and the saint, ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells

... that it was not a spirit of dissipation and gaiety that led them to the springs, for they were not to be seen in any of the gay and fashionable circles; they were never out of their father's company, and never stirred from home, except to attend him, either to take the air or drink the waters; in a word, they lived a most recluse life in the midst of a town then the resort of the most illustrious and fashionable personages of Europe. This exemplary attention to their father procured these three amiable sisters the admiration of all ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... minivan, motor scooter',trolley, locomotive; legs, feet, pegs, pins, trotters. traveler &c. 268. depot [U.S.], railway station, station. V. travel, journey, course; take a journey, go a journey; take a walk, go out for walk &c. n.; have a run; take the air. flit, take wing; migrate, emigrate; trek; rove, prowl, roam, range, patrol, pace up and down, traverse; scour the country, traverse the country; peragrate|; circumambulate, perambulate; nomadize[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... game of chess; or pictures in Bond Street, or a long way home to take the air with Bonamy on his arm, meditatively marching, head thrown back, the world a spectacle, the early moon above the steeples coming in for praise, the sea-gulls flying high, Nelson on his column surveying the horizon, and the world ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... up his mind to the risk, and merely assisted Berenger in assuming his few equipments, then gave him his arm to go down the stairs. Meeting Guibert on the way, Berenger left word with him that he was going out to take the air with Maitre Pare; and on the man's offering to attend him, refused ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Ay, a pox on him, let him go, dormouse: he is in a dream now. He has no other time to sleep, but thus when he walks abroad to take the air. ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... received; but as I trace over what we went through I see how much common ground we must have found in the one idea that, by good fortune, COULD steady us. It was the idea, the second movement, that led me straight out, as I may say, of the inner chamber of my dread. I could take the air in the court, at least, and there Mrs. Grose could join me. Perfectly can I recall now the particular way strength came to me before we separated for the night. We had gone over and over every feature ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... arts, viz., teaching the horse to fight with his forelegs or lash out with his hind-legs at various angles in a general melee of horse and foot, but especially teaching him the secret of 'inviting' an obstinate German boor to come out and take the air strapped in front of a trooper, and do his duty as guide to the imperial cavalry, were imported into the Austrian service by an English riding-master about the year 1775-80. And no doubt it must have been horses trained on this ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... take the air, And hear the trains roll by, And dream of all the visions fair That o'er the housetops lie; The meadows where the daisies stray, The bleating sheep, as white as they, The breakers and the sparkling spray, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various

... morning's work was over, I informed my secretary that I would go out and take the air ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... apprehension at least, as "too divine." The cabin is removable at pleasure, and is generally taken off and replaced by awnings in summer. But in the evening, when the fair Venetians go out in their gondolas to take the air, even this awning is dispensed with, and the long slender boat glides darkly down the Grand Canal, bearing its dazzling freight of white tulle, pale-faced, black-eyed beauty, and flashing jewels, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... night, amid whistling squalls of wind and bitter blasts of hail—in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in—a farmer, or farmer's servant, was plodding and plashing homeward, with his plough irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... that's no fair, That ye'll no let the wee thing take the air: Haste, let him out; we'll tent as well's we can, Gif he be Bauldy's, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, "An abode-without birds is like a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... my father and mother in a chaise and pair, which your kind brother had presented to them unknown to me, that they might often take the air together, and go to church in it (which is at some distance) on Sundays. The driver is clothed in a good brown cloth suit, but no livery; for that my parents could not have borne, as Mr. ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... trumpets filling the air, were heard far and near around the island, she became so overwhelmed with uneasiness that she insisted upon going to the shore, though hitherto she had not been permitted to take the air except under the awning stretched for the purpose on the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... Wife's and the Family's; the other is a Physick Garden, containing the choicest physical Herbs. At the left Hand there is an open Meadow, that is only a green Plot enclos'd with a quick-set Hedge. There sometimes I take the Air, and divert myself with good Company. Upon the right Hand there's an Orchard, where, when you have Leisure, you shall see a great Variety of foreign Trees, that I have brought by Degrees to ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... up, smiling through her tears, but she did not observe the flashing eyes which watched her through the window at the rear of the car. Always restless and impatient of confinement, John Jr. had come out for a moment upon the platform, ostensibly to take the air, but really to see if it were possible to get a glimpse of Nellie. She was sitting not far from the door, and he looked in, just in time to witness Mr. Wilbur's action, which he of course construed just as his ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes

... came out to take the air. She was wrapped in her gown of sea-green silk, with sparkles of dull copper upon it. The dress fitted her like a snake's skin, and glittered like it too as she swayed her lithe ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... rain she kept in her coach; she hunts in a chaise with one horse, which she drives herself, and drives furiously, like Jehu, and is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod. Dingley has heard of Nimrod, but not Stella, for it is in the Bible. . . . The Queen and I were going to take the air this afternoon, but not together: and were both hindered by a sudden rain. Her coaches and chaises all went back, and the guards too; and I scoured into the marketplace ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... the village there was an old woman frightfully disfigured by fire, and not quite sane as the people thought. She was harmless, but never showed herself by day, and only came out at night to work in her garden or take the air. Many of the ignorant peasants feared her, however; for the country abounds in fairy legends, and strange tales of ghosts and goblins. But the more charitable left bread at her door, and took in return the hose she knit or the thread ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... brush and comb, a stroll through the streets with the girls, by leave of Pa, who wished Lily to take the air, then home again, more housework.... The apprentices, who did not yet perform in public, were sent to bed early, while Lily, escorted by Pa, went off to East, West, South or North London. An hour to get there; then undress, dress, appear on the stage under Pa's eye, ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... graceful steed and tame, A sleek Arabian mare, The Lady Juliana came, Riding to take the air, With Lords of fame, at whose proud name A radical ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... far-away. Now and then Nelly brought home from the market a bunch of garden-flowers. But the sight of them only made her long the more for the fields where so many flowers that she knew had blossomed and faded unseen. More than once, when sent out by Mrs Lee to take the air, she had tried to extend her walk in one direction or another, till she should reach the country. But partly because she did not know the way, and partly because she grew so soon weary, she never succeeded. She had to content herself with the nearest street ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson

... she may be grown a fine girl: she bade fair to be so when I saw her; but fine girls are very plenty now-a-days, since the Vaccine has turned out the small-pox. Besides, the girls have now another chance of a good shape; they are allowed to take the air, instead of sitting all day, with their feet in the stocks and their dear sweet noses bent over a French grammar, under the rod of a ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... pondered deeply: was it worth the fag to go to Cairo? Knowing full well that his last three weeks' shirts and socks awaited washing, he decidedly dutifully to remain at home, though possibly he might take the air, and probably the beer, of Heliopolis in the evening. However, his good intentions were ruthlessly upset, for at that moment the interior of his desert domicile was swiftly converted into a swirling tornado of dust and dirt. Blankets, towels and ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... said Pen as they were motoring to town. "I seem to see you from such a new angle now. I have always thought of you as a lovable, happy-go-lucky boy, but when I saw you take the air, I knew you had come to be something far different. You have the hawk-sense of balance, the sixth sense—the sense woman was supposed to have a monopoly of till the day of aeroplanes arrived. You had nerve to go up there and yet you were ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... informed Madam Beatrix what her part of the comedy was to be:—"In half an hour," says he, "her Majesty and her favorite lady will take the air in the Cedar-walk behind the new Banqueting-house. Her Majesty will be drawn in a garden-chair, Madam Beatrix Esmond and HER BROTHER, MY LORD VISCOUNT CASTLEWOOD, will be walking in the private garden, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... But a little further thought and I knew there were more capable men than I walking the streets of Boston looking for work. However, a lot could happen before I would have to worry, and so I decided to take the air and think ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly

... Westminster Bridge, and appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground, which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. Except the entrance, where the turnkeys keep watch and ward, there is nothing in the place that looks like a jail, or bears the least colour of restraint. The street is crowded with passengers. Tradesmen of all kinds here ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... sort of commission. At least, this is no midnight interview. You shall call in broad daylight on the Senora Yturrio. If you and my daughter will take my coach and four to-morrow, I think she will gladly receive your cards. Perhaps also she will consent to take the air of Washington with you. In that case, she might drop in here for an ice. In such case, to conclude, I may perhaps be favored with an interview with that lady. I must have Van Zandt's signature to this treaty which ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough

... went forth to take the air that afternoon and incidentally to pay his respects in person to Madame de Brissac. Fortune favored him, for he met her coming down the path from the upper town. He lifted his hat ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... tails hanging below their small caps. Here and there you may see a high, narrow box, resting on poles, carried by two men. It is the only kind of carriage which you will see in these streets, and in it is a lady going out to take the air; although I am sadly afraid she gets but little, shut up there in her box. I would rather be like Pen-se, a poor, hardworking little girl, with a fresh life on the river, and a hard mat spread for her bed in ...
— The Seven Little Sisters Who Live on the Round Ball - That Floats in the Air • Jane Andrews

... and Violets blue, And Cowslips with their yellow Hue, And Lady's Smocks of Silver white, Paint all the Meadows with Delight, Then shall I meet my charming Fair, On ouzy Banks to take the Air; There shall we taste delicious Love, Equal to what is ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]

... cold, and before the Sunday muster came round the garments had vanished—not into thin air, indeed, but in tobacco and rum, for which forbidden luxuries he invariably bartered them with the bumboat women who had the run of the vessel while she remained in harbour. Or allow him on deck to take the air and such exercise as could be got there, and the moment your back was turned he was away sans conge. Few of these runaways were as considerate as that Scotch humorist, William Ramsay, who was pressed at Leith for beating ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... smiled when they saw me hurrying aft. The marines on the half-deck smiled as I flew by them. Everybody aboard knew by this time of my five years from home and the little baby waiting. Good old Doctor and Pay, going up to take the air on the quarter-deck, said: 'Hurry, Dick, hurry!' Hurry? I was taking the ladders in single leaps. At the foot of the last one, in the passageway leading to the ward-room, I all but bowled over a little fellow who was looking up the ladder ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly

... Mike sailed Harry, who had been sitting during the afternoon chatting by Jacob's bedside, went out to take the air. He strolled along the wharves, near which were the drinking-houses, whence came sounds of singing, dancing, and revelry, mingled occasionally with shouts and the clash of steel, as quarrels arose among the ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty

... Frugal, and grave, and careful of the main, Yet one who once did nobly entertain A city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay, A mouse of high degree, which lost his way, Wantonly walking forth to take the air, And arrived early, and alighted there, For a day's lodging. The good hearty host (The ancient plenty of his hall to boast) Did all the stores produce that might excite, With various tastes, the courtier's appetite. Fitches and beans, peason, and oats, and wheat, And a ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... However, I will do better for you than what you propose. The understanding is not that I shall come back for them. I am going into the Parc Monceau with my little girl to give her a walk, and my mother-in-law, who comes so rarely into this quarter, is to profit by the same opportunity to take the air. We are to wait for her in the park, where my husband is to bring her to us. Follow me now; just within the gates I shall get out of my carriage. Sit down on a chair in some quiet corner and I will bring them near you. There's devotion for you! ...
— The American • Henry James

... Glumdalclitch and I attended the King and Queen in a progress round the south coast. I was carried as usual in my travelling box, a very convenient closet about twelve feet wide. I longed to see the ocean, which must be the only scene of my escape, and desired leave to take the air of the sea with a page who sometimes ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... transaction of any public affairs, and secluding himself in his own house, he would admit no visitors and open no papers on business. In vain did his most trusted colleagues sue to him for one hour's conversation. As the spring advanced, he retired to a house at Hampstead, and was able at intervals to take the air upon the heath, but was still at all times inaccessible to all his friends." His brother-in-law, Mr. Grenville, wrote:[106] "Lord Chatham's state of health is certainly the lowest dejection and debility that ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke

... Bascom and several other worthy citizens, were returning from a pleasant supper at Blazes'. They sat for a time in the saloon of the ferry boat El Capitan with the birds of gorgeous plumage they had royally entertained and then went outside to take the air; the ladies ...
— Sleeping Fires • Gertrude Atherton

... wanting in my duty to her, if I did not do my best endeavour to effect her cure and yours, and exert my utmost skill. This then is the means I have contrived to obtain your liberty. You have not stirred abroad for some time, therefore let the king your father understand you have a mind to take the air, and ask his leave to go out on a hunting party for two or three days with me. No doubt he will grant your request; when he has done so, order two good horses to be got ready, one to mount, the other to change, and leave ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... of a mile-long hill as swallows take the air; houses, barns, woods, orchards, grain fields, flew by on either side; other cars approaching passed them like cannon balls; the sunlit, undulating world flowed glittering away behind; only the stainless blue ahead confronted them immovably—a ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... abominable, thrice-cursed Anselmus!" He ran forth directly to Doctor Eckstein, who smiled, and again said: "Ey! Ey!" This time, however, he prescribed nothing; but added, to the little he had uttered, the following words, as he walked away: "Nerves! Come round of itself. Take the air; walks; amusements; theatre; playing Sonntagskind, Schwestern von Prag. Come round ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... it is that so it should be—that the more God gives to men, the less they thank Him, the less they fancy that they need Him: but take His bounties, as they take the air they breathe, unconsciously, and as a ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... long as he had not to meet inquiries or face tears, he enjoyed the sense of security. He never quitted his wife save to walk to the Southern park lodge, where letters and telegrams were piled awaiting him; and she was forbidden to take the air on the castle terrace without his being beside her, lest a whisper, some accident of the kind that donkeys who nod over their drowsy nose-length-ahead precautions call fatality, should rouse her to suspect, and in a turn of the hand undo his labour: ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... commanding the air service (the R.N.A.S.), and was asked to be careful not to do too much air work. This at a time when through stress and strain and loss we had, I think, a total of five machines left able to take the air! ...
— Aviation in Peace and War • Sir Frederick Hugh Sykes

... these friendships—life, what cauchemar!" Among the windings of the violins And the ariettes Of cracked cornets Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own, Capricious monotone That is at least one definite "false note." —Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance, Admire the monuments Discuss the late events, Correct our watches by the public clocks. Then sit for half an hour ...
— Prufrock and Other Observations • T. S. Eliot

... church-yard is locked up. We could spend the time so delightfully in it. But, never mind; let us go down to the Battery,—it 's not a very pleasant place, but it's near, and it's historical, and it's open,—where these drowsy friends of ours used to take the air when they were in the fashion, and had some occasion for the element in its freshness. You can imagine—it's cheap—how they used to see Mr. Burr and Mr. Hamilton ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the rippling brook doesn't always furnish the best water, and the lea furnishes very imperfect forage during nine months of the year. A twenty-acre lot in good grass, in which to take the air, is all that a well-regulated herd of fifty cows needs. The clean, cool, calm stable is much to their liking, and the regular diet of a first-class cow-kitchen insures ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... sure do wish she was ready to take the air," Johnny said under his breath to Sandy, who merely threw up his head and stared at the thing with ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... across the field to the Frenchman's side as it was seen he was about to take the air again, and a dozen volunteers laid on to the rear frames of his craft and held her back while he started the engine. The Frenchman took his seat with deliberation and adjusted his gloves with care. It was easy to see ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton

... make it necessary, we won't be callin' for the wagon," Casane stated. "Just the three of us'll take a little stroll, like I'm telling you—just stroll out and take the air up to Headquarters." ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... Chancellor, desiring that all the members of the Cabinet may attend at Windsor to-day; but this I imagine (and, indeed, his letter conveys it), has no relation to any other subject, but to an idea of moving the King to Kew, where he can take the air without being overlooked, as is the case at Windsor. I have nothing new to write to you on other subjects, though I believe I shall have in a day or two; probably ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... and fragrant, aromatic in the sunshine. You don't even know the smell of box in sunshine, you poor child! But I remember that day, for I was ten years old, a right big girl, and it was a beautiful morning for an invalid to take the air. Mammy said she was proud to see how her 'handsome boy' kept step with his father, and she watched the two until they got away down by the rose-garden, and then she couldn't see little Philip behind the three-foot hedge, so she turned ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... preferred being on board the frigate, for although I have a great respect for many Africans, I must say that it is not agreeable to have some hundreds of them as shipmates. We had happily very fine weather, and the poor people were able constantly to take the air on deck. They seemed to have forgotten all their sufferings and miseries, and would sing and dance and tell stories, and laugh all day long. I still continued to take Peter Pongo in hand, and began to teach him not only to speak but to read and write English. ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston

... out to take the air with his pupil, who, as I have already observed, was odious to the poor people, for having killed their dogs and broken their inclosures, and, on account of his hump, distinguished by the title of My Lord, when in a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... such happy faces." said Aunt Madge. "How would you all like to go out by and by, and take the air?" ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)

... played the part of a temporary lunatic. Fortunately his window communicated easily enough with the garden by means of a few stone steps, but visitors are not usually in the habit of leaving their bedrooms in order to take the air at midnight. Thinking over these things in his rapid and rather superficial way, he ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... have seen my lord, for at this hour my lord Alexandros is accustomed to sleep and I to wake. And so I take the air, and am ...
— The Ruinous Face • Maurice Hewlett

... said Mary Wells, in a broad, hearty way—"a cloud in your head! You've had a bad fall, and a fit at top on't, and no wonder your poor head do ache at times. You'll outgrow that—if you take the air and give over fretting about the t'other thing. I tell you you'll hear the music of a child's voice and little feet a-pattering up and down this here corridor before so very long—if so be you take my ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... no sooner over the river, Down in a forest to take the air, But eighty merchants of London city Came kneeling ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... "To take the air, mademoiselle. If upon deliberation you can bring yourself to marry me, send me word by Anatole or one of the others, and I shall set out at once ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini

... cried Hughie. "Maimie and I will take the air, and Ranald will take the bass. Cousin Harry, can ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... Fifteen, another in the college of Titius, and a third amongst the Augustals; and from that time to the middle of Nero's reign, he lived for the most part in retirement. He never went abroad (405) so much as to take the air, without a carriage attending him, in which there was a million of sesterces in gold, ready at hand; until at last, at the time he was living in the town of Fundi, the province of Hispania Tarraconensis was offered him. After his arrival in the province, whilst he ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... Tower, from which the Labyrinth did run, are yet remaining, being vaults arched and walled with stone and brick, almost inextricably wound within one another, by which, if at any time her lodging were laid about by the Queen, she might easily avoid peril imminent, and, if need be, by secret issues take the air abroad, many furlongs about Woodstock in Oxfordshire. [Drayton's England's Heroical Epistles, Note A, on the Epistle, Rosamond to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... lord's allowance, I took the liberty to have them come to Paris sometimes, and so to take a tour into the garden of the Tuileries and the other pleasant places of the city. It happened one day that my prince (if I may call him so) had a mind to give me some diversion, and to take the air with me; but, that he might do it and not be publicly known, he comes to me in a coach of the Count de ——, a great officer of the court, attended by his liveries also; so that, in a word, it was impossible to guess ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe

... were in use, but none of the large size and wide range required for effective naval reconnaissance. Good and rapid progress, on the other hand, was made with aeroplanes and seaplanes, and when war broke out we had a small but healthy service, both naval and military, ready to take the air. ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... desirous to learn my secrets, and to entrust me with her own; this thought engaged me strictly to her. I was so pleased with this distinction that I made my court to her with greater assiduity than usual. One evening the King and the ladies of the Court rode out to take the air in the forest, but the Queen, being a little indisposed did not go; I stayed to wait upon her, and she walked down to the pond-side, and dismissed her gentlemen ushers, that she might be more at liberty. After she had taken a few turns she came up to me, and ...
— The Princess of Cleves • Madame de La Fayette

... "The American officer may take the air briefly on deck if he so desires," said the German. "It is by gracious permission ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... took a little walk, We might have a little talk; Pray let us take the air," Said the Table ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... Robert, Duke of Normandy, by one of his mistresses called Harlotte, from whom some think the word harlot is derived; however, as this amour seems odd, we shall entertain the reader with an account of it. The Duke riding one day to take the air passed by a company of country girls, who were dancing, and was so taken with the graceful carriage of one of them, named Harlotte, a skinner's daughter, that he prevailed on her to cohabit with him, and she was ten months after delivered of William, ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown

... Truth was such an invalid,—I said.—How long is it since she could only take the air in a close carriage, with a gentleman in a black coat on the box? Let me tell you a story, adapted to young persons, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various

... took a satisfied glance at the mirror. Then, a little nervously, with an anxious eye and a quivering pink nose, she hastily invited Sugar and Fire to take the air with her. So they all three walked out, while the others went on dressing. Let us follow them for a moment, for we have already grown to like our brave little Tyltyl and we shall want to hear anything that is likely to help or ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc

... whistling squalls of wind, and bitter blasts of hail; in short, on such a night as the devil would choose to take the air in; a farmer or farmer's servant was plodding and plashing homeward with his plough-irons on his shoulder, having been getting some repairs on them at a neighbouring smithy. His way lay by the kirk of Alloway, and being rather on the anxious look ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... Spanish-Italian olive-trees; but there is another side to his nature—the manufacture of quaint inventions, of which the Victor Pirolo is, perhaps, not the least surprising. She and a few score sister-craft of the same type embody his latest ideas. But she is not comfortable. An A.B.C. boat does not take the air with the level-keeled lift of a liner, but shoots up rocket-fashion like the 'aeroplane' of our ancestors, and makes her height at top-speed from the first. That is why I found myself sitting suddenly on the large lap of Eustace Arnott, who commands the A.B.C. Fleet. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... all weathers we take the air—walking, or sitting in little companies talking over each other's ailments and measurements and ills that ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield

... the motionless flowers and foliage of carved stone; look out over the reef with its white fringes of foam in contrast to the sapphire sea; and then turn to the city, with its galleries and terraces whither the townsfolk come to take the air among their flowers of an evening, above the houses and the tops of the trees in their little gardens; add a few sails down in the harbour; and lastly, in the stillness of falling night, listen to the organ music, the chanting of the services, the wonderful sound of bells ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... more to add, and so, sanding the sheets, I laid them back behind the swinging panel which I myself had fashioned so cunningly that none might suspect a cupboard in the simple wainscot. Then to wash hands and face in fresh water, and put on my coat without the waistcoat, prepared to take the air on the cupola, where it should soon blow cool ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... have formed the angle of their separation from the parent stem, always bend downwards so as not to crowd against the other branches which follow them on the same stem and to be better able to take the air which nourishes them. As is shown by the angle b a c; the branch a c after it has made the corner of the angle a c bends downwards to c d and the lesser shoot c dries ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... subtleties of etiquette; and once he held his wand of office in his hand, there was nowhere to be found a being so precise and consequential. But out of doors he had the timidity of a cat. He lived, however, by rule and rote, and since it had always been his habit to take the air between three and four of the afternoon, he was to be seen between those hours at Innspruck on any fine day mincing along the avenue of trees before the villa in which his ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... their toilettes. Intimacy becomes impossible, and quiet enjoyment of life. On the other hand, the crowd of bourgeois has not invaded Brighton. The drive is not blocked up by flys full of stockbrokers' wives and children; and you can take the air in your chair upon the chain-pier, without being stifled by the cigars of the odious shop-boys from London." So Lady Kew's name was usually amongst the earliest which the Brighton newspapers recorded ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray

... to take the air and be company for Flora. To be sure, Amy, the tall princess spoken of in the last chapter, was sitting at the window that opened on to the porch; but then she was busy. She could not be company for anybody, for she was ...
— Baby Pitcher's Trials - Little Pitcher Stories • Mrs. May

... Chartres had come out to take the air. Some dated from the days of the Directory, swallowed up the wearer's neck, climbed up high behind the nape, muffled the ears and padded the shoulders; others had shrunk by lying in the drawer, and their sleeves, much too short, cut the wearer ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... the paths, choked with unkempt weeds. Not an hour before, when he had parted from Inez, he had determined to make sentimental journeys to that same house. For she had walked in those gardens, it was through those gates she had swept in her carriage to take the air in the Plaza; at night, when she slept, some high-ceilinged, iron-barred room of that house had sheltered her. He had pictured himself prowling outside the empty mansion and uncared-for garden, thinking of the exile, keeping vigil ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis

... extraordinary swiftness; and appointed Roger Mortimer, who had returned into the kingdom, to be ready at hand with a small party to receive the prince, and to guard him to a place of safety. Edward pretended to take the air with some of Leicester's retinue, who were his guards; and making matches between their horses, after he thought he had tired and blown them sufficiently, he suddenly mounted Gloucester's horse and called to his ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume

... seated thus alone, became aware that another man was dragging a chair out upon the stoep, intending, like himself, to take the air. Looking up, he saw that it was the man to whom nobody ever seemed to talk, beyond exchanging the time of day, and that in the most curt and perfunctory fashion. He had noticed, further, that this individual seemed no more anxious to converse with other people than they were to converse ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... passage-hawk that footed ere we caught him. Dangerously free o' the air. Faith, were he mine (As mine's the glove he binds to for his tirings) I'd fly him with a make-hawk. He's in yarak Plumed to the very point. So manned, so weathered! Give him the firmament God made him for. And what shall take the air of him? ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... all lay down after dinner (the day being wonderful hot) to sleep, and each of us took a good nap, and then rose; and Tom Wilson come to see me, and sat and talked an hour. By and by he parted, and we took coach and to take the air, there being a fine breeze abroad; and I went and carried them to the well, and there filled some bottles of water to carry home with me. Here W. Hewer's horse broke loose, and we had the sport to see him taken again. Then I carried them to see my cousin Pepys's house, and ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... hole in the side for a hall-door!' soliloquized Andy. 'No, but two holes, one for the quality an' the other for the commonality. An' no deck at all at all for the people to take the air, only all cabins intirely! If it isn't the very dead image of a side of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... the children appeared out of doors, they experienced such insults that they left off going anywhere beyond the palace gardens, from which the public were excluded, in order to allow the family to take the air unmolested. Such cries, however, were heard from the terrace outside, that, after being twice driven in by them, the family gave up going out at all Louis had to give up his gardening, and the sight of the flowers ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau

... of those lumbering, four-wheeled affairs with four horses, and a platform for two standing attendants behind and wooden lattice-work over the windows, in which the women-folk of princes take the air. But there were no attendants—only a coachman, and a woman who came running out to meet her; for Yasmini, like her cousin the maharajah, did not trust too many people ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy

... lady-love! A condition of unexampled friendship this, of complete oneness. They had both cut themselves garments from the same cloth, as the Arabic saying goes. And on Sunday afternoon, in garments spick and span, they would take the air in Battery Park, where the one would invoke the Statue of Liberty for a thought, or the gilded domes of Broadway for a metaphor, while the other would be scouring the horizon for the Nothingness, which is called, in the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... chooses to be governed by kings and queens has a right to realize the fact that kings and queens are human beings, that they shoot, drive, take the air like the subjects whom they govern. And if in some coming day we are to toss up our hats and shout ourselves hoarse for a sovereign who is still in his cradle, it is wise as well as natural that we should cultivate ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... David, "but it wa'n't the kind of emotion it kicked up in my breast at the time. I cleaned myself up with a towel well 's I could, an' thought I'd step out an' take the air before the feller 'd come back to git that tray, an' mebbe rub my ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... got it! I thought I was knockin' 'em dead and these guys thought I was a waiter! Well, I thinks, I'll show them boobs somethin' before I take the air—I can pull that stuff myself! With that I breezes into the next room and there's a hick sittin' at a table, toyin' with a book. He was as near nothin' as anything I ever seen, on the level! He's got a swell dress suit on, but it didn't fit him no better than mine did me and it ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer

... open to all the world. You shall see there, any pleasant day before the Carnival, the aristocracy of the kingdom, the fast young hopes of the nobility, the diplomatic body resident, and the flexible figures and graceful bearing of the high-born ladies of Castile. Here they take the air as free from snobbish competition as the good society of Olympus, while a hundred paces farther south, just beyond the Mint, the world at large takes its plebeian constitutional. How long, with a democratic ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... morning's ride. The same circumstances occurred in this country. When coaches began to be kept by the gentry, or were hired out, a powerful party found their "occupation gone!" Ladies would no longer ride on pillions behind their footmen, nor would take the air, where the air was purest, on the river. Judges and counsellors from their inns would no longer be conveyed by water to Westminster Hall, or jog on with all their gravity on a poor palfrey. Considerable bodies of men were ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... There's a thing called electricity. Well, you know that if you take a slice out of anything, less remains behind. We can take the air out of this room, and scarcely leave any ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... pupils to practise on. I thought that they might as well hang at once all who need to go through such exercises in so new a country, where there is nothing to hinder their living an outdoor life. Better omit Blair, and take the air. The country about the south end of the lake is quite mountainous, and the road began to feel the effects of it. There is one hill which, it is calculated, it takes twenty-five minutes to ascend. In many places the road was in that condition called repaired, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... affable; but he must not do even that to extravagance. When the Queen was passing up the Clyde, an American seaman got on the topgallant, and stood on his head. What was that for, I should be glad to know? Suppose her Majesty was coming along Princes Street, just to take the air like a lady, and look into the shop-windows, and I was to go right up to her, and stand on my head—what would she say? I surmise, that she would turn round to her Lord Gold Stick, and order him to give me a knock on the shins. I know she would, for she is a regular ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various

... appearance in the doctor's little back parlour on this occasion. With even more than her usual fondness, or Fleda's excited imagination fancied so, Mrs. Thorn lavished caresses upon her, and finally besought her to go out and take the air in her carriage. Fleda tried most earnestly to get rid of this invitation, and was gently unpersuadable, till the lady at last was brought to promise that she should see no creature during the drive but herself. An ominous promise! but Fleda did not know any longer how to refuse without hurting ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... not be balked thereof. I have made inquiry touching Mr Marshall's house, and I find there is a little gate from the garden thereof into Saint Andrew's churchyard. I will call for her as to-morrow in my coach, and carry her to take the air. An ancient servant of mine, that is wedded to the clerk of Saint Andrew's, dwelleth by the churchyard, and I will stay me there as though to speak with her, sending away the coach upon another errand that I can devise. Then from her house my ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt

... sooner he his head had rested there, Than, with deep sleep opprest, he closed his eye: So heavily, no badgers in their lair, Or dormice, overcome with slumber, lie. Martano and Origille, to take the air, Entered this while a garden which was nigh; And there the strangest fraud together bred, Which ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... at the kind suggestion of the cabman deposited Leek's goods at the cloak-room of South Kensington Station, he was wandering on foot out of old London into the central ring of new London, where people never do anything except take the air in parks, lounge in club-windows, roll to and fro in peculiar vehicles that have ventured out without horses and are making the best of it, buy flowers and Egyptian cigarettes, look at pictures, and eat and drink. ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... I, when looking out of my window one day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked at me very ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... vivid narrative to the little crowd which had collected at the front door. She came back, followed by the next-door neighbour, Mr. James Flynn, whose offers of assistance ranged from carrying Mr. Scutts out pick-a-back when he wanted to take the air, to filling his pipe for him ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs



Words linked to "Take the air" :   locomote, move, go, travel, walk, constitutionalize



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