RIPE grapes are full of juice.

This juice is mostly water, sweetened with a sugar of its own. It is flavored with something which makes us know, the moment we taste it, that it is grape-juice, and not cherry-juice or plum-juice.

Apples also contain water, sugar, and apple flavor; and cherries contain water, sugar, and cherry flavor. The same is true of other fruits. They all, when ripe, have the water and the sugar; and each has a flavor of its own.

Ripe grapes are sometimes gathered and put into great tubs called vats. In these the juice is squeezed out.

In some countries, this squeezing is done by bare-footed men who jump into the vats and press the grapes with their feet.

The grape-juice is then drawn off from the skins and seeds and left standing in a warm place.

Bubbles soon begin to rise and cover the top of it with froth. The juice is all in motion.

If the cook had wished to use this grape-juice to make jelly, she would say: “Now, I can not make my grape-jelly, for the grape-juice is spoiled.”

WHAT IS THIS CHANGE IN THE GRAPE-JUICE?

The sugar in the grape-juice is changing into something else. It is turning into alcohol and a gas that moves about in little bubbles in the liquid, and rising to the top, goes off into the air. The alcohol is a thin liquid which, mixed with the water, remains in the grape-juice.

The sugar is gone; alcohol and the bubbles of gas are left in its place.

This alcohol is a liquid poison. A little of it will harm any one who drinks it; much of it would kill the drinker.

Ripe grapes are good food; but grape-juice, when its sugar has turned to alcohol, is not a safe drink for any one. It is poisoned by the alcohol.

WINE.

This changed grape-juice is called wine. It is partly water, partly alcohol, and it still has the grape flavor in it.

Wine is also made from currants, elderberries, and other fruits, in very much the same way as from grapes.

People sometimes make it at home from the fruits that grow in their own gardens, and think there is no alcohol in it, because they do not put any in.

But you know that the alcohol is made in the fruit-juice itself by the change of the sugar into alcohol and the gas.

It is the nature of alcohol to make the person who takes a little of it, in wine, or any other drink, want more and more alcohol. When one goes on, thus taking more and more of the drinks that contain alcohol, he is called a drunkard.

In this way wine has made many drunkards. Alcohol hurts both the body and mind. It changes the person who drinks it. It will make a good and kind person cruel and bad; and will make a bad person worse.

Every one who takes wine does not become a drunkard, but you are not sure that you will not, if you drink it.

You should not drink wine, because there is alcohol in it.

CIDER.

Cider is made from apples. In a few hours after the juice is pressed out of the apples, if it is left open to the air the sugar begins to change.

Like the sugar in the grape, it changes into alcohol and bubbles of gas.

At first, there is but little alcohol in cider, but a little of this poison is dangerous.

More alcohol is all the time forming until in ten cups of cider there may be one cup of alcohol. Cider often makes its drinkers ill-tempered and cross.

Cider and wine will turn into vinegar if left in a warm place long enough.

REVIEW QUESTIONS.

1. What two things are in all fruit-juices?

2. How can we tell the juice of grapes from that of plums?

3. How can we tell the juice of apples from that of cherries?

4. What is often done with ripe grapes?

5. What happens after the grape-juice has stood a short time?

6. Why would the changed grape-juice not be good to use in making jelly?

7. Into what is the sugar in the juice changed?

8. What becomes of the gas?

9. What becomes of the alcohol?

10. What is gone and what left?

11. What is alcohol?

12. What does alcohol do to those who drink it?

13. When are grapes good food?

14. When is grape-juice not a safe drink?

15. Why?

16. What is this changed grape-juice called?

17. What is wine?

18. From what is wine made?

19. What do people sometimes think of home-made wines?

20. How can alcohol be there when none has been put into it?

21. What does alcohol make the person who takes it want?

22. What is such a one called?

23. What has wine done to many persons?

24. What does alcohol hurt?

25. How does it change a person?

26. Are you sure you will not become a drunkard if you drink wine?

27. Why should you not drink it?

28. What is cider made from?

29. What soon happens to apple-juice?

30. How may vinegar be made?