Word: teat
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...simile: "I tried to argue with those fellows at Chicago [in 1944] that I didn't want to be Vice Pres ident. I told them, 'Look at all the Vice Presidents in history. Where are they? They were about as useful as a cow's fifth teat.'" When he first said it, Harry Truman was roughly right; but today, any generalization about the uselessness of Vice Presi dents falls over the example of Richard Nixon, 36th Vice President of the U.S., who is one of the busiest, most useful and most influential men in Washington...
...life is confused and dangerous, and mom is usually to blame. Some sows eat their young, and many roll on them or trample them to death. Another bad habit of sows is producing more pigs than they can feed properly. The average sow has only eight or ten teats (some of which may not be functioning), and she often farrows as many as 16 pigs. The runts and laggards that don't connect with a functional teat during their early mealtimes are gone pigs. Hunger makes them too weak to compete in later battles...
...even sleep through meal periods and die of malnutrition. About the only thing that will wake a piglet is the deep, rumbling grunt that the mother sow gives when she "lets down" her milk. When they hear it, the more alert pigs wake up and scuttle squealing to the teat line. As they suckle, they squeal with joy, and their racket wakes the other pigs...
...like pulling a rug out from under his own feet. By the book's end, the reader has been taught to wonder what compulsion makes a man set out to explain most of the world's literature as just an infant's whimper for a bountiful teat...
...Massachusetts magistrates sent to Salem Village for preliminary examinations faced a difficult problem: what constituted evidence of witchcraft? The Bible mentioned it in the same breath with sodomy and idolatry, but neglected to define it. After due deliberation the magistrates declared that a devil's "teat" or "devil's mark" on the body of the accused was proof of guilt, that mischief following anger between neighbors was ground for suspicion, and, most important of all, that "the devil could not assume the shape of an innocent person." This last meant that hallucinations would be accepted not as evidence...