THE GREEN TREE HOTEL 153 



where Hayden was. He said he was sitting down close 

 by the water's edge an hour ago. 



I soon found him sitting there bareheaded and bare- 

 footed. By his husky voice I knew he was still drink- 

 ing; so I left him there. I learned a few days later that 

 soon after daylight he went up to the saloon in the base- 

 ment under the drug store and asked the proprietor, 

 "John, what kind of whiskey was that I drank last 

 night?" "Why? What did it do to you?" "It made me 

 go down to the river; sit down, take ofif my shoes and 

 hat and gently put them afloat. Then I took a stick and 

 pushed them out where they caught the current and I 

 guess they are down to Hampton by this time. I 

 thought I was launching a lot of barges. Wasn't that a 

 great note?" 



Only a few months ago I had a letter from a lady in 

 Inglewood, California, asking for information about 

 the green tree. This lady is gathering material for a 

 history of noted trees and she says the green tree of Le- 

 Claire, Iowa, is one of the few trees that have places in 

 the Hall of Fame in Washington, District of Columbia. 



It has grown considerably since raftsmen used it for 

 a summer hotel. Its trunk is now (1928) thirteen feet 

 in circumference five feet from the ground, and its very 

 thick top has a spread of ninety feet east and west and 

 ninety-three feet north and south. 



The townspeople take good care of it and it is in 

 excellent health; and in summer nights when all else is 

 still and only a slight warm breeze causes a murmur in 

 its dense foliage, I can easily imagine it whispering the 

 lines of my friend, Robert Rexdale's old refrain: 

 "When the Mississippi was the Great Highway," and 

 how I wished it could talk and tell about some of the 

 splendid boats that had landed and often laid close to it 



