Useless and bad as alcohol is for full-grown men and women, it is even
worse for young and growing children; and no child, and no boy or girl
under the age of twenty-one, should ever touch a drop of it, except in
those rare instances where it may be prescribed as a medicine by a
doctor, just as many other drugs are, which in larger doses would be
poisons.

Fortunately, it will be no trouble for you children to let it alone
entirely; for not one of you would like the taste of it the first
time--or, indeed, for the matter of that, for the first ten or twelve
times--that you tried to drink it, if you should be so foolish. This
is one striking difference between alcohol and all other foods and
drinks. Children have absolutely no natural liking, or taste, for the
drinks that contain it, as they have for meat, milk, sugar, apples,
and the other real foods. This is Nature's way of telling them that it
is not a real food, and not needed in any way for their growth and
health. Let it alone absolutely, until you are at least twenty-one
years old; and by that time you will probably have become so convinced
of the harm that it is doing that you will never begin using it at
all.

What we have been saying so far applies, of course, only to the
moderate use of alcohol. How terrible the effects of the long or
excessive use of alcohol are, you don't need to learn from a book. All
you have to do is to keep your eyes open on the streets, and see the
drunken men reeling along the sidewalk, and the wrecks of men that
hang around the saloons. The poorhouses and the jails and the insane
asylums are filled with them. The most terrible thing that can happen
to anyone is to become a drunkard. The best and safest and only