The blood, you know, flows everywhere through the body, giving its goodness to make every part grow and live, and carrying away the worn-out particles it meets.  Blood, when poisoned with alcohol, goes through the body, giving disease and death instead of health and life.  So, if you want good, red blood, do not let alcohol get into it.

TO THE HEART.—­When alcohol comes with the blood from the liver, the heart begins to beat fast to get rid of the firewater; this makes it very tired, for it always has enough to do in carrying bad blood to the lungs, and pumping good blood into the arteries, without having the extra trouble of driving out alcohol.  Wise people will not give it this extra work to do.

Besides, we told you, in the talk about the harm done by alcohol to the muscles, that the heart,—­which is only a large muscle, or rather many muscles fastened together so as to make a pear-shaped organ about the size of your fist,—­is hurt in another way by alcohol.  It gets too much of the poor kind of fat from the blood, which fills between the muscles, and after awhile makes the walls of the heart so soft and weak, that we could almost push through them with a finger, if we could get at them.

Very often the tired, overworked, weakened heart suddenly stops beating, and the person who would keep on drinking beer, wine, brandy, or rum falls down dead.  “Died from heart disease,” people say, when the truth is, died from drinking alcoholic liquors.

TO THE LUNGS.—­What are the lungs?—­“The breathing-machines of the body.”  What do they throw out?—­“Bad air.”  What do they take in?—­“Fresh air.”  In pure air there is a good kind of gas which is necessary to keep us alive; this gas is called oxygen.

When air is taken into the lungs, the oxygen mixes with the blood in them and makes it pure.  If alcohol is in the lungs, it hardens the walls of their air-cells, and keeps out the oxygen or good gas; at the same time it keeps in the impure gas, called nitrogen, which ought to come out through the nose and mouth into the air.  Thus the blood in the lungs cannot be properly purified, and goes back to the heart impure blood which is unfit to be used.

The lungs are also obliged to work faster when alcohol is in them, because with the heart they are striving to drive out the enemy.  This makes the lungs tired, sore, and inflamed.  They are not as strong to do their work, and are more likely to breathe in any contagious disease than are the lungs of people who do not drink alcoholic liquors.

Some people go on drinking these poisons for many years, and seem not to be hurt by them; but at last they suffer from what is called Alcoholic Phthisis, a kind of consumption which doctors cannot cure.