﻿Golf 
 
Far be it from me to withhold any discovery I may make from the readers of this paper. I simply cannot do it—it is not my nature to be secretive. Being of a scientific turn of mind many things present themselves to me, in my daily intercourse with life, that would never come to the notice of less careful trained eyes. 
But my eyes are beginning to get weak, therefore it was necessary for me to take cognizance— did you ever take cognizance, and get away with it—cognizance is harder to take than castoria. 
Mv first impulse was to get a pair of hornorimmed “sagless gates” for my oggles. But the idea had no more than trickled through the entanglements of my state department when i had to lay it aside as impracticable on account of the recent financial drains upon my department of the exchequer. 

Some other method had to be discovered to rejuvenate the windows of my soul. I couldn’t go out and hire a window cleaner to bring out the lustreful (translucent) transparency of my soulful orbits. No. 

But, as is a custom with scientific gentlemen with watery eyes, I didn’t propose to “shashay” into sightless oblivion without making an effort to take a good look at the capitalist system, before 1 go. I concentrated all the mind I had on my troubles. And you can bet your bi-focal binoculars the preponderance of mind marshalled and focused on said troubles, was prepossessing. The shook alone, of concentration on such a gigantic scale, was sufficient to break the points off them California seismographs you have been reading about. Yes. 

In troubles of this kind one must systemize his action and thus, ferret out his true condition. My first move was to find out whether my growing blindness was physical or spiritual. I went down to the slave market to test my eyes. I looked over all the signs and couldn’t see a thing over 43c per hour, so you see my eyes were physically fragile. 

My buoyant soul pulled a blanket of gloom up to its chin; tears stood in my eyes without power enough behind them to splash down on the cruel pavement of a heartless city. 

Oh for green fields of Hennepin County! Oh for the laughing waters of Minnehaha Falls! Oh for the placid bosom of some magic Lake Minnetonka, Lake Calhoun, Lake Harriet— Ah! Again would I strop my eyes on the velvety lawn of the Country Club. Again would I whet the mirror of my soul upon the grandeur of nature’s handiwork, to regain my vision. I would play— I would play golf (excuse me dear reader, I would cry again). The employment shark has shipped me to a railroad coal chute! 
Poor blind, T-Bone Slim, sent to a coal chute! 

Well, I s’pose we’ve got to do the best we can. They put me on the night shift. They should have known better— the shape my eyes are in! Sleeping was about all I could do. —A carful of coal is hauled up, the pockets are flung open and the contents slide out in a cloud of dust onto a steel grating; the finer coal goes through but the chunks stop on the grating. It was a part of my duties, in my waking moments, to break up those chunks; breathe this dust, get my eyes, cars and nose full of it. I would reach down in the darkness and feel lump, pick up my nibblick and address the ball (but there is always the danger that I would slice my drive in the darkness and when that would happen particles of coal would fly up and hit me in the eyes already overstrained). Then I would have to lay down for the rest of the night. 

Golf, on top of a coal chute, is the greatest remedy for weak eyes. I make this unqualified statement, as a man of science, and offer my discovery free of charge to all blinking book worms. And, even strong eyes can be strengthened by filling them full of coal dust in the spring of the year. 
Besides: You can get paid 43c per hour until fully cured — that is if you are able to punch a time clock or get some one to do it for you, if you can’t see good. 

The one trouble with playing golf on top a coal chute is that your balls get so dusty it is next to impossible to make a mashie shot.— (T-Bone Slim).