The Tucumcari news and Tucumcari times. [volume] (Tucumcari, N.M.) 1907-1921, 1909-12-25
A Holiday Anniversary.

The week between Christmas aud
New Year 10 one of many anniversaries,
and It has always seemed to me that
among the most significant, from IA
merely human standpoint, is that OF the
recurrence of the birthday OF Albert
Pike. This year 1t is the centenary OF
that great poet, lawyer, patriot, Master
Mason. In a thousand Masonic centcrs
IA the great west, the 18th of December
will be observed with especial ceremony,
Tor ON that day in 1904, IN the city oi
Boston, this great figure was born. 1t
was "a humble birth. The father wa
u SHOEMAKER, the mother a type vi that
evolution OF three hundred years which
made hcI great personal beauty "a ma
ter vi modification rather than of pride
and gratitude, whose uscctic religion
had little sunshine ~ 1t, which idcaliz.
such IA character dominated the house
hold, the lad had hard shedding
measured from the standards OF joyous
bOyhOod rs We now know them. lie
respected his mother + views, but cOpi
I'd his father . tOIcrance-nud kept 1t
all through his long aud useful life.
lie reached early Tor knowledge, aud
httcd himself ior Harvard, by way of
the common schools and the Farming
ham Academy, but when he found that
to enter the larger institution he must
pay two years tuition IN advance, he
concluded that hc didn I want to be
a college man IL he had have had the
price, he might have become an cducat.
cd fool, and the world would have lost
much, Masonry infinitely more. lie
taught school Tor years, until the iull
measure Vt his manhood developed. lie
was by nature u broad thinker, By
genius n poet, large minded, sensitive,
high strung, conscious of his power aud
hall afraid Of it. There is now aud
there was then little III New England
for such a spirit. Ia 1881, Returned
has face 10 the west, aud history really
began. lie threaded tho Willis as far
as anti Fe, and At IS recorded that he
even passed down the vale vi the l'ecos
that We love, then sleeping in the ar;Is
vi the desert aad little suggestive of
the wonderful empire we have and our
children will vastly extend, lie wand
cred across Texas, and settled IN Arkan.
sas, where he taught school aud began
his really worth while literary work.
In Little Rock he took up journalism,
and began the study OF law, aud from
this point the historical record OF him
Is plai.. Joe Newton, Tor instance,
having given us u superb outline vi his
life, from 1886. A tender little poem
ITO Mary" about this time told Of
other thoughts, following his marriage
in 1884. The same year appeared his
Prose Sketches and Poems, " follow
cd by "Ariel," a longer poem, bold,
spirited, scholarly. The magazines Of
those days accepted his stun with glad.
ness, Tor he struck n new and "a clear
note, for as the editor OF "Blackwoods"
said, his poems marked him out to be
a poet Of the Titans. Pike cared moth.
lng for the laurel Of fame, and wrote
rs he pleased. His poet.soul was Il well
spring OF delight, and he seems to have
cared only for the JOY, and sometimes
the pain, of writing. Perhaps his
greatest poem was that describing the
battle OF Buena Vista in the Mexican
war, in which no was u notable aud
a valorous figure. After that wal ho
championed the Indians, whose langu.
age he spoke and whom he recognized
as the victim Of the white man 5 greed.
lie carried their case TO the supreme
court, to the bar of which he was nd.
mittod in lS40, along with Abraham
Lincoln and Hannibal lIamlin. HIS
speech in the case of the Senate Award
to the Choctaws, - q classic in AmeTi.
can oratory, by the verdict of no less
authority than Daniel Webster himself.
BY any test he was great us an orator,
massive as Hercules, graceful as Apollo,
a lawyer ranking with Grimes, Prem.
tiss and PettigTew, u poet, "a man OF
action, uniting the learning OF the
scholar with the practicRlness OF a maA
Of affairs, and above all gifted with the
imperial magnetism Of genius. IL was
only natural that later on the appeal
Of the south in the great in~ternecine
strife should have appealed to him, and
that he should have been made a
~brigadier general, in command Of the
Indian Territory. Many yet living 70.
member his part in that, and the inside
truths Of the resignation Of his com
mission, for reasons that have been a
thousand times justified, and which but
added to his lustre as a southern patri.
OF.
However II was to Masonry that the
flower Of the life CT this wonderful
man wRs given. He took his master y
degree in 1850, and from thence on to
the end, his whole life was wrapped
up In 1t. He is unquestionAbly the
greatest figure In American Masonic
history. II may almost DO said that
he found Masonry in a log cabin and
left 1t In q temple. In his life as a
pioneer no saw the Masonic lodge rs
q silent partner Of the home, the church,
tho school, tol.ing in behalf Of law, 80.