10. Why does the wine, cider, or beer-drinker often get as much alcohol?

CHAPTER VII.

ALCOHOL.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A]LCOHOL looks like water, but it is not at all like water.

Alcohol will take fire, and burn if a lighted match is held near it; but you know that water will not burn.

When alcohol burns, the color of the flame is blue. It does not give much light: it makes no smoke or soot; but it does give a great deal of heat.

A little dead tree-toad was once put into a bottle of alcohol. It was years ago, but the tree-toad is there still, looking just as it did the first day it was put in. What has kept it so?

It is the alcohol. The tree-toad would have soon decayed if it had been put into water. So you see that alcohol keeps dead bodies from decaying.

Pure alcohol is not often used as a drink. People who take beer, wine, and cider get a little alcohol with each drink. Those who drink brandy, rum, whiskey, or gin, get more alcohol, because those liquors are nearly one half alcohol.

You may wonder that people wish to use such poisonous drinks at all. But alcohol is a deceiver. It often cheats the man who takes a little, into thinking it will be good for him to take more.

Sometimes the appet.i.te which begs so hard for the poison, is formed in childhood. If you eat wine-jelly, or wine-sauce, you may learn to like the taste of alcohol and thus easily begin to drink some weak liquor.

The more the drinker takes, the more he often wants, and thus he goes on from drinking cider, wine, or beer, to drinking whiskey, brandy, or rum.

Thus drunkards are made.

People who are in the habit of taking drinks which contain alcohol, often care more for them than for any thing else, even when they know they are being ruined by them.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

1. How does alcohol look?

2. How does alcohol burn?

3. What will alcohol do to a dead body?

4. What drinks contain a little alcohol?

5. What drinks are about one half alcohol?

6. How does alcohol cheat people?

7. When is the appet.i.te sometimes formed?

8. Why should you not eat wine-sauce or wine-jelly?

9. How are drunkards made?

CHAPTER VIII.

TOBACCO.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A] FARMER who had been in the habit of planting his fields with corn, wheat, and potatoes, once made up his mind to plant tobacco instead.

Let us see whether he did any good to the world by the change.

The tobacco plants grew up as tall as a little boy or girl, and spread out broad, green leaves.

By and by he pulled the stalks, and dried the leaves. Some of them he pressed into cakes of tobacco; some he rolled into cigars; and some he ground into snuff.

If you ask what tobacco is good for, the best answer will be, to tell you what it will do to a man or boy who uses it, and then let you answer the question for yourselves.

Tobacco contains something called nicotine (nik'o tin). This is a strong poison. One drop of it is enough to kill a dog. In one cigar there is enough, if taken pure, to kill two men.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Even to work upon tobacco, makes people pale and sickly. Once I went into a snuff mill, and the man who had the care of it showed me how the work was done.

The mill stood in a pretty place, beside a little stream which turned the mill-wheel. Tall trees bent over it, and a fresh breeze was blowing through the open windows. Yet the smell of the tobacco was so strong that I had to go to the door many times, for a breath of pure air.

I asked the man if it did not make him sick to work there.

He said: "It made me very sick for the first few weeks. Then I began to get used to it, and now I don't mind it."

He was like the boys who try to learn to smoke. It almost always makes them sick at first; but they think it will be manly to keep on. At last, they get used to it.

The sickness is really the way in which the boy's body is trying to say to him: "There is danger here; you are playing with poison. Let me stop you before great harm is done."

Perhaps you will say: "I have seen men smoke cigars, even four or five in a day, and it didn't kill them."

It did not kill them, because they did not swallow the nicotine. They only drew in a little with the breath. But taking a little poison in this way, day after day, can not be safe, or really helpful to any one.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

1. What did the farmer plant instead of corn, wheat, and potatoes?

2. What was done with the tobacco leaves?

3. What is the name of the poison which is in tobacco?