as if jack were struck dumb in the pulpit of golf

a bouquet of golf clubs

Burges Johnson, As Much as I Dare: A Personal Recollection. New York: Ives Washburn, 1944, p. 105—

After I had married and moved to Long Island, my cousin Tristam Burges Johnson died most dramatically in Washington DC.…While he was playing golf with Edgar Poe [a descendant of the writer] a storm threatened; there was no rain but some muttering of thunder. Poe went back to the club house, but Tristam walked across the links with an iron club over his shoulder to follow up one more shot, was struck by lightning and instantly killed. There was no other lightning flash and no rain storm followed. Naturally it made a dramatic story for the papers. Dr. [Henry L.] Stimson, who had not seen me for a long time, saw the headlines and [confusing Burges Johnson for his cousin] announced from his pulpit the death of a young man from his congregation. Then he wrote a letter to my young wife which I have always wanted to have framed because it seems to me that it is the only truly appreciative statement of my many virtues that I have ever read. Dr. Stimson was naturally embarrassed when he received my wife’s reply and I think always felt that the lightning had hit the wrong man.

* Edgar Allan Poe (1871-1961), who was Attorney General of the State of Maryland in 1911-1915, was a second cousin of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), the celebrated writer. As a student at Princeton, he was the quarterback and captain of the football team in his junior and senior years, and was named All-American in 1889. After a football game in which Princeton beat Harvard, 41–15, someone from Harvard asked a Princeton alumnus whether Poe was related to “the great Edgar Allan Poe,” in response to which the alumnus said, “He is the great Edgar Allan Poe.”