Word: calmness
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Christina Stead's prose is as hard and cold as a cake of ice. A sharp-eyed Australian now living in the U.S., Miss Stead specializes, with the murderous calm of a hangman slightly bored by his job, in dissecting egotists and connivers. One of her better novels, House of All Nations, was a long, superbly documented description of the world of high finance, which viciously satirized the European big money and led some critics to compare her, rather prematurely, to Balzac...
Heavy Breathing. State Department officials listened to all this heavy breathing with utter calm and, in the cases of some career men, with ill-concealed grins. In her muscular attempt to save face, the U.S.S.R. was abandoning two excellent listening posts, one in San Francisco and one in New York. The U.S. was losing next to nothing: merely the privilege of maintaining an isolated consular outpost in Vladivostok and of endless negotiation for a second consulate in Leningrad...
...Servant's Role. When Franklin Roosevelt made his frontal assault on the "nine old men," Hughes reacted, in public at least, with Jovian calm. But he quietly and effectively fought F.D.R.'s effort to pack the court. When Roosevelt stood before him to be sworn in for a precedent-breaking third term, Hughes whispered through his beard: "Franklin, isn't this becoming a trifle monotonous?" A few months later, at 79, he resigned as Chief Justice and retired to a quiet life of quiet honors...
...Gift at the Gate. Jungle Man, Pretorius' autobiography (he,died in 1945), could have done with a dash of the Hemingway talent. It is competently written, but with a calm matter-of-factness that makes a commonplace of every act of fantastic nerve and daring. Pretorius spent years in unexplored territory and established precarious friendships with cannibals and tribes openly committed to the exclusion of whites. He had a good ear for their dialects, which he learned, and a nice inquiring eye for aboriginal customs. In one tribe he found what must have been the simplest form of courtship...
...Catalina skimmed above the calm waters and set its course for Hong Kong. Below, off Nine Islands, a scattered fleet of fishing junks spread their lugsails against the sky. Chiu Tok moved forward, ordered Senior Pilot Cramer to surrender the controls to him. One of the passengers rose to interfere. The pirates shot him. Co-Pilot McDuff grabbed an iron flag bar and swung on Chiu Tok. In a panic, the pirates fired wildly at the two pilots. Cramer slumped dead over the controls. As screaming passengers spilled into the aisle, the plane came around in a wide circle...