Word: placidness
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...Britons, acting for all the world like U.S. bobby-soxers, craned and crowded for a glimpse of Robinson and his flamboyant 14-man entourage or a peek at the gaudy fuchsia convertible* parked outside. Turpin, 23, son of a British Guianan and a white British mother, trained in the placid remoteness of Grwych Castle in North Wales...
Under its sometimes placid surface, the sea is shown to be a swirling and endless battleground: 70-ton sperm whales pitted against squids 30 feet long, fur seals preying on species of fish no man has ever seen alive. And in the midst of this bloody, ceaseless struggle, some pacifists survive a long time: in the calm Sargasso Sea, plants last for centuries...
...visitors feel them more keenly. Formerly host to every sensitive traveler with a metaphysical bee in his Baedeker, Santayana now restricts himself to old friends. Comparative solitude comes as no penance to a man who has long preferred a cloistered life, and shared for the past ten years the placid round of a Roman Catholic retreat...
...Guadalcanal, the pet puppies of the G.I.s are now wild dogs; the British colonial officials again dress for dinner. At Espiritu Santo, once a huge U.S. base, now a placid French colony again, the natives wear T-shirts and tailor-made shorts. Said the chief of police when Michener departed: "You must be very sorry to leave so happy an island. Where everybody dances and gets drunk and the chief of police never makes a fuss...
...then, did people say, as did Shaw's chauffeur, "I would do anything for Mr. Shaw"? For one thing, Shaw at home was the most placid and modest of men. In 30 years, Miss Patch only saw him lose his temper twice. He seldom "contradicted any of us," and "of malice he was utterly incapable ... He could be kind," sums up the author in the most devastating remark of her book, "when he remembered you were there...