Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1884 — Lives in a Tree. [ARTICLE]

Lives in a Tree.

Washington is the paradise of cranks, and all the curious characters in the country seem to have congregated here. My latest disoovery is a man who lives in a tree. He is an SI,BOO clerk in the Pension Office, and his name is A. B. Hayward. He is a blackwhiskered, pleasant-looking, one-armed bachelor of about forty years. His aerial habitation is situated just eutside of the boundary limits, between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth street roads, within a quarter of a mile of Joaquin Miller’s cabin. It consists of a tent-like house built upon a pine platform fastened between two big oak trees. This platform is perhaps twentyfive feet square, and it is fastened to the trees as far up from the ground as the first story of a business building. It is certainly higher than any ceiling in America. Upon this platform a wall of pine boards about eight feet high is built in the form of a hollow square, and from the top of this a tent roof of two thicknesses of canvas rises in wedge shape. The canvas is of the best quality, and I notice the Government stamp is on one of the sides of the roof. The entrance is on the west, and before it is a wide platform where its owner can come out and sit in the warm summer evenings, and on which are now sitting a rocking-chair and a water-bucket. This platform is reached by a ladder twenty feet long, but very light. Mr. Hayward takes it off to a farm-house near by when he goes to work, and returning he brings it again to his tent, and in the tent he entertains his friends. Its interior is comfortably furnished, and it is heated with a little oil stove. There is a carpet on the floor, rocking-chairs are scattered about the room, and there is a book-shelf and a writing-table. Pictures are fastened upon the walls, and the wnole makes very comfortable quarters.—Washington Cor. Cleveland Leader.