ere are two interesting
experiments which your teacher or parents can make for you.

_Experiment 1._ Place a piece of tender beefsteak in a saucer and cover
it with alcohol. Put it away over night. In the morning the beefsteak
will be found to be shrunken, dried, and almost as tough as a piece of
leather. This shows the effect of alcohol upon the tissues, which are
essentially like those of lower animals.

_Experiment 2._ Break an egg into a half glassful of alcohol. Stir the
egg and alcohol together for a few minutes. Soon you will see that the
egg begins to harden and look just as though it had been boiled.

~34.~ This is the effect of strong alcohol. The alcohol of alcoholic
drinks has water and other things mixed with it, so that it does not act
so quickly nor so severely as pure alcohol; but the effect is
essentially the same in character. It is partly in this way that the
brain, nerves, muscles, and other tissues of drinking men and women
become diseased.

Eminent physicians tell us that a large share of the unfortunate persons
who are shut up in insane asylums are brought there by alcohol. Is it
not a dreadful thing that one's mind should be thus ruined by a useless
and harmful practice?

SUMMARY.

1. Alcohol is produced by fermentation, and obtained by distillation. It
will burn like kerosene oil and other burning fluids.

2. The vapor of alcohol will burn and will sometimes explode.

3. Alcohol may be separated from beer and other fermented liquids by
boiling.

4. Brandy is distilled from fermented fruit juice, whiskey and gin from
beer or fermented grains, rum from fermented molasses.

5. Alcohol is the result of a sort of decay, and much good food is
destroyed in producing it.

6. Besides ordinary alcohol, there are several other kinds. Naphtha and
fusel-oil are alcohols.

7. All the members of the alcohol family are poisons; all will burn, and
all will intoxicate. The alcohol family have several bad relations,
among which are carbolic acid, ether, and chloroform.

8. Cider, beer, and wine are harmful and dangerous as well as strong
liquors. "Bitters" often contain as much alcohol as the strongest
liquors, and sometimes more.

9. Alcoholic liquors are sometimes adulterated, but they usually contain
no poison worse than alcohol. Pure alcohol is scarcely less dangerous
than that which is adulterated.

10. Death sometimes occurs almost instantly from taking strong liquors.

11. Alcohol wil