[Illustration: WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE A BACK YARD LIKE THIS?]

[Illustration: OR LIKE THIS?]

There is one great evil that for hundreds and hundreds of years has
been known wherever people are crowded together, and even in the open
country, too; and which has been the cause of more untidiness and
uncleanliness and unhappiness and disease than any other evil ever
known. And that is the drinking of alcohol. People don't drink clear
alcohol, but they can get a great deal of it--enough to poison them
badly--in the fermented drinks you learned about some time ago.

In the days when your grandfather was a little boy, every man thought
that ale and wine and whiskey were good foods for him when he was
well; and good medicine when he was sick. He believed that they gave
him an appetite, and increased his strength. But now we have found, by
carefully studying the effects of alcohol, in laboratories and in
hospitals, that these beliefs were almost entirely mistaken. We know
that all that wine, beer, and whiskey do is to make people feel better
for a little while, without making them actually stronger or better in
any way. In fact, in most respects these drinks make them weaker and
worse instead.

Perhaps you will ask, "How do whiskey and wine and beer do us harm?"
And here is only part of the answer: (1) They tire the heart and, by
enlarging the blood pipes in the skin, make the heart pump too much of
the blood out to the skin. In this way they make a person feel warmer
when he really is not any warmer. (2) They make the liver work too
hard. (3) They dull the brain, so that it cannot think so clearly or
so well. (4) If one drinks them frequently, it is harder for him to