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 sensible thing to do is to keep away from the only stuff that makes drunkards. It may do you the most terrible harm, and it cannot do you the slightest good. Your city can never become the "City Beautiful" so long as this evil mars it; and, as you grow up, I hope you will do all you can toward making the right kind of city and home. THE EVENING MEAL When you have had some good games of play after school, and have finished whatever errands you may have to run, or have done the chores about the barn or the garden or the house, you will begin to feel as if there were something missing somewhere. It won't take you very long to discover where that missing feeling is; and when you hear a call from the house, or a ring of the bell in the hall, you come running in for supper. If you have worked well in school and played hard and done your chores well, you will have a splendid appetite. In fact, you will think there is no other meal in the day that tastes quite so good. Is your evening meal supper or dinner? If you have had a hot dinner at noon, you probably do not want anything more than a good supper. But if you had only luncheon, then you are ready to eat something hot and hearty about six o'clock.