In a tiny village beside the Mountains in Eastern Europe, a little boy lived in a great house beside a stream. One Summer, a terrible illness came over everyone in his family. Both his mother and father and sisters died of the fever. The illness left him very weak and sickly.
Years went by and the young boy became a man. He looked forward to the day that he would marry and have a family of his own, for he was very lonely. He added rooms to the large house, and bought furniture and toys just right for the children hehoped to have someday.
But then, the doctors told him that the fever had damaged his body in such a way that he would never be able to father any children. Still, he built closets in his house and filled them with little shirts and shoes and dresses, just right for
children. He turned the grounds into gardens, and beautiful terraced lawns to play in, but they remained empty.
Soon the townspeople regarded him as quite peculiar, and no father in the village would consider giving their daughters in marriage to this strange man who
lived a life plagued with disaster all alone in a house of sorrow.
All of the parents would warn their children not to go near the Quiet house, for indeed it was very quiet and odd.
One terrible night, fire broke out in one of the homes in town. The flames spread from house to house. The men and women formed a line that streched from the river to the fire, and passed buckets along from hand to hand trying to put out the flames.
All of the children were sent to the river's edge, away from the fire. Then the fire reached the town hall, and the roof of the huge building gave way and fell. Dozens of people were killed, and many were hurt and died soon after.
Morning came and found all of the children by the riverside, weeping and without homes or families. The Quiet House was never scorched, because it was on the other side of the water.
It was then that the lonely young man opened the doors to his house, filled with all the things that he had prepared for the babies that would never be born. There were fifty children, and each had suffered a terrible loss, he knew. He, too had felt such a loss, had cried those same tears.
The Young Man gave them all the love and care that he had saved for his own
children who never came. The empty house was full to overflowing !
Soon, all the children began to call him Papa, though he was father to none. And as they grew, he cared for each one tenderly, and later he loved their children as his grandchildren. And the young man had grown to be quite an old man.
The Quiet House was never again quiet since that night of fire.
Now, all the chilren are grown, but the House is always filled with people, young and old, and every child in the village, even those whose families lost nothing in the fire, calls the old man Grandpapa.
