MY neighbor’s little boy one evening saw his teacher coming up the lane and called her in to take a look at his pet fawn.

“Well, if he didn’t get half a foot taller since I saw him last,” said the teacher; “if he keeps on like that, Tommy, he will be a big deer the first thing you know.”

“Yes, he’s growing,” said Tommy; “but I wanted to see you about something else. He seems to be sick, and we do not know what to do about it.”

“Why, he looks all right now; what seemed to be the matter with him?”

“He doesn’t eat,” said Tommy, “and he upset his water dish when I tried to make him drink. I went up on the hill to get him the best grass I could find, but it’s no use; he must be sick.”

“Let me see that grass,” said the teacher. “I thought so,” she laughed, when Tommy took her to the fawn’s fodder corner; “you got a lot of wormwood leaves mixed up with the grass, and one of the leaves got in that water dish.”

Tommy stared. “Oh! maybe that’s the reason he upset his water,” he burst out; “but I had no idea that would make any difference. What makes him so very particular about a few leaves, I wonder?”

“You will know if you taste them,” said the teacher; “and maybe your fawn wanted to get even with you for teaching him to jump through a hoop.”

“Why, he seems to like that,” laughed Tommy.

“That’s just what I mean,” said the teacher; “he felt so much obliged to you and wanted to pay you back—by teaching you a good lesson. An animal, you see, won’t touch any bad-tasting food if it is in good health, and if you give it the wrong kind of drink it doesn’t mind its thirst, but waits till it gets something better. And that’s an answer to the question you asked me a few weeks ago, when you wanted to know how people could help getting fond of drinks that make them drunk and sick. They should let such stuff alone altogether, if they find out it does not taste right at first. You found out something about that yourself, didn’t you?”

“About what—the ugly taste of bad drinks, you mean?”

“Yes; don’t you remember what you told me about that hotel where you got thirsty, and tried a glass of something you thought was lemonade, and found it was beer?”

“O, yes! I remember,” laughed Tommy; “I never tasted anything worse in my life. I don’t see how in the world people can get fond of such stuff.”

“That’s just it,” said the teacher; “they should do as your little deer did this afternoon, and never meddle with a drink that tastes very bad the first time they try it, unless they should be sick and need a bitter medicine for particular purposes. If a healthy person should try to drink big glasses full of ugly medicine just for fun every day he would soon be sick, and few medicines taste as bad as some of the drinks so many people get drunk on.”

“Cod-liver oil doesn’t, nor herb tea,” said Tommy. “I tried them, and know they are not half as ugly as beer. And they say beer isn’t the worst yet,” he added; “there are drinks that taste like burning fire, if you get a drop on your tongue. I don’t see how in the world anybody can get fond of such stuff.”

“Let me tell you,” said the teacher. “The first time they try it they cannot help disliking it, and they should take the hint to let it alone altogether. But if they keep drinking it in spite of their horror, it will lead to a very strange result. Their nature gradually gets changed, till a time comes when they cannot do without a drink that made them shudder when they tasted it first. It is that way with beer and brandy, and even with a drink made of that very wormwood that would have made your deer sick if it had eaten it. Just rub one of those leaves between your fingers, and then put the tip of your finger to your tongue. That is just exactly the taste of a stuff called absinthe, and brandy and strong beer are almost as bad.”

“You say people get fond of it if they drink it again and again,” mused Tommy, “but what makes them do that, I wonder? What makes them try it at all?”

“They see other people do it,” said the teacher, “and so they try it themselves, and keep on trying, because they think Mr. So-and-so ought to know better than nature. Their own nature warns them against it, but they do not mind that warning, and keep on till it is too late to turn back. Now you might ask me to tell you who first took it in his head to make himself sick with such a foolish habit. That seems a puzzle, indeed, but it has been explained in this way. Before people drank wine they drank the fresh juice of grapes—‘must,’ as they call it—and probably tried to keep some of it in bottles and jars. Now in warm weather sweet juices of that sort are very apt to spoil—they ferment, as it is called, and their pleasant taste becomes sharp and disagreeable. Some stingy housekeeper in old times may have forced his servants to drink that spoiled stuff rather than throw it away, and after a while they got fond of it, and the foolish habit spread all over the country. Now wine is nothing but fermented or spoiled must. Beer is fermented barley water. They let barley get soaked in water, and then mix it and stir till it gets that sharp taste that made you sick when you tried it by mistake in that summer hotel last year.”

“Yes; and on that same trip I once got in the wrong railway car,” said Tommy, “and that car was full of tobacco smoke enough to make my little brother cry, and I thought it would choke me before the train stopped and we got back in the right car. I know a boy who got so sick he had to go to bed when he first tried to smoke; but I am sure I shall never try it at all.”

“That’s right, Tommy; let such things alone altogether,” said the teacher. “It’s very easy never to begin, but if you should get fond of such bad habits you might find it hard to get rid of them.”

“I have a book about travels,” said Tommy, “and I read that the American Indians first taught white men to smoke. One of my cousins has been in Mexico, and when I asked him what made the Indians so fond of tobacco smoke, he said they first used it to drive mosquitoes out of their cabins. They burn tobacco leaves on a hot pan, and the gnats all fly out of the window.”

“I should not wonder,” laughed the teacher; “and that would show that mosquitoes have more sense than those Indians.”

Felix L. Oswald.