Not long ago I was at the home of a friend where for supper we had the nicest grape juice I ever tasted. When I said, “How good it is!” one of the little girls piped up, “Billy and I picked the grapes, and sister made it all by herself. She learned how at cooking school.”
When I was packing my suitcase to leave, this little girl brought out a big bottle of grape juice and wanted me to take it with me to remember her by. It was all beautifully sealed with wax, and even this she had done by herself! Do you think I could have kept it that way very long? Perhaps not, it was so good; but if I had wanted it for a keepsake, I could have kept it, sealed as it was, for years and years, and it would have been just as sweet and fresh as when it was given to me.
Suppose, instead of keeping it in its bottle, I had poured it out into a glass. Can you tell me what would have happened to it then?
In a few days little bubbles would have come, one after another, up to the top of the juice; and soon it would have been all full of bubbles. What causes the bubbles? Floating all about in the air and sunshine are tiny specks called spores. These are to the tiny yeast plants what seeds are to other plants. Seeds fall into the ground and grow, but these yeast spores fall into the grape juice and grow. While they are growing in the grape juice, they eat what they want from the juice; and, as they eat, they make bubbles of carbon dioxid,—which, you remember, forms in our lungs and looks like air,—and of another substance called alcohol. Of course, when they have changed the juice in this way, it tastes very different. It is then what we call fermented.
Fermented drinks are harmful; but some people like bubbling drinks so much that they leave good fresh grape juice open on purpose to let the little yeast plants get into it and make it into what we call wine. They treat apple juice in just the same way to make cider; and they even take fresh rye and barley and corn, and mash them up, and put yeast plants into the mash to ferment them and make them into whiskey and beer. It does seem a pity, doesn’t it, to take good foods like wheat and apples and grapes and make them into these things that really do us harm if we drink them.
A very wise man named Solomon, who lived thousands of years ago, warned people not to drink wine, not even to look at it when it sparkled in the cup. He said no really wise man would drink it. Of course not; the wise man uses the food and drink that make his body grow strong and his brain work true, and no fermented drink can do that.
There is no better drink for anyone than clear pure water, and no better food and drink in one than pure fresh milk.
A SCHOOL KITCHEN WHERE BOTH BOYS AND GIRLS LEARN TO COOK