ears, grapes, potatoes,
beets, rice, barley, maple, honey, etc.

Alcohol can be obtained only by _fermentation_. By fermentation we mean the
change which takes place when a juice containing sugar decays, or goes to
pieces. You know decay always makes things fall to pieces.

You ask, what pieces is sugar made of? Very, very little pieces, called
_atoms_. There are different kinds of sugar. In that made from grapes,
called _grape sugar_, there are six atoms of carbon, twelve of hydrogen,
and six of oxygen. What are carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen? Oxygen is the
kind of gas which keeps animals alive, and makes things burn. Hydrogen is
another kind, which you have smelled perhaps when water has been spilled on
a hot stove; the gas burned in street-lamps is hydrogen that has been
driven out of coal. Carbon you see in charcoal and soot; the black lead of
your lead-pencils is mostly composed of carbon and iron; lamp-black is pure
carbon, without form or shape.

We will let these circles of colored paper stand for the atoms of carbon,
hydrogen, and oxygen in grape sugar,--the largest, which are red, for the
oxygen; the second size, which you notice are black, will represent atoms
of carbon; while the little blue ones will make you think of hydrogen.

If you remember that it takes one atom of carbon and two of oxygen to make
carbonic acid gas; also, that two atoms of carbon, one of oxygen, and six
of hydrogen to form alcohol, you can easily find that two atoms of carbonic
acid gas and two atoms of alcohol may be formed from an atom of sugar. So
the more sugar a juice contains the more alcohol may be formed from it.

_CIDER._--Cider is made by pressing the juice out of apples. This sweet
cider ferments, and the sugar part of it changes into carbonic acid gas and
alcohol. People who do not understand this go on drinking cider, not
knowing that it makes drunkards of those who drink much of a beverage which
seems so pleasant and harmless.

_WINES._--Wines are made from the juices of fruits which have sugar in
them, especially grapes. Sometimes people have what they call _home-made
wines_, which they make from blackberries, currants, elderberries,
gooseberries, cherries, or other fruits. They may ask you to take some,
saying, "This will do you no harm; we did not put any alcohol into it."
They do not know what you have learned, that alcohol is always formed in
fermented juices which contain sugar. It does not wait to be put into the