Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1893-12-12
SWEET GRAPES.

Warning Lesson for the Young People.
What kind of fruit do you like best?
Most boys and girls like nearly all
kinds.
Good. ripe fruit is a necessary part
of our daily food. It is much better to
spend our money for fruit than at
candy store.
Men sometimes squeeze out the
juice of good fruits and make it into
poisonous drinks. 1t is great pity to
have the fruit that is good for our use
spoiled to make drinks that do us
harm. A harmful drink called wine is
made from grapes.
To make wine men crush grapes in
a press and squeeze their juice into a
big tub, or vat, that is put under the
press to receive it.
You have often seen upon the skins
of grapes q kind Of dust that you could
easily rub off. When grapes are being
pressed the juice that flows from them
washes off some of this dust and car
ries it into the vat.
In this dust are some very tiny things
called forments. They are SO small
you can not see them unless you look
at them through glass called a mag
nifying glass or microscope. A micro
scope, as you may know makes things
look many times larger than they real
ly are.
If you should look at ferment
through a microscope you would see q
very tiny speck without much shape or
color. You might think it too small to
do any harm; but many ferments to-
gether can do a great amount of mis-
chief. They quickly spoil good grape
juice after it has been pressed out of
the grape. How do you think they do
this?
The juice of grapes is sweet, as you
know, because there is sugar in it. No
one puts the sugar in the grape; it
forms in them while they are ripening.
just how this is done we do not know.
The ferments change this sugar Of
the grape juice, after it is pressed out,
into gass and poison. They can not
do this while the juice is inside the un-
broken grape, for they do not get in
side the fruit while it remains whole.
: But when the juice is squeezed out Of
| grapes and is left standing in the vat,
| the ferments that were on the stems
and skins of the grapes begin to work
upon the sugar of the juice. Other
ferments, too, get into the vat from
the air. Ferments are SO small and
light that they are easily carried about
in the air.
How can we know when ferments
are turning the sugar of grape juice
into gas and a poison? We can know
by the little bubbles of gas we see ris-
ing up through the juice. This gas
passes out INTO the air, but the poison
remains in the wine and makes the
| wine poisonous.
The name Of this poison is alcohol.
There is no alcohol in q sound. ripe
grape.
No one should drink wine for there is
alcohol in it.
All poisons do not at once kill those
who take only little at time; but
man could easily take enough alcohol
to kill him at once. The man who
takes little alcohol every day is sell
dom as strong a man, as wise a man, or
as good a man as he would be without
alcohol. The alcohol hurts his body
and his mind.
Alcohol may make father cruel to
his children and to his wife. 1t some
times makes man tell falsehoods and
do other bad deeds.
One of the most dangerous things
about alcohol is that it can make those
who take it want more alcohol. Ifyou
should begin to take wine, the alcohol
in it might make you want to drink
more and more wine until you cared
for nothing so much as drinking.
1t is the nature of alcohol to make
those who take it want more alcohol
Union Signal