onomatopoeia.
EVERYTHING IN ITS PROPER PLACE
IT WAS OVER A hundred years ago.
Back in the forest beside the big lake there was an old manor house, and around it there was a deep moat full of rushes and reeds. Right by the bridge to the entrance gate stood an old weeping willow, whose branches leaned over the reeds.
From the high banked road she heard horns and the tramping of horses so the little goose girl hurried to get her geese off the bridge before the hunting party came galloping over. They came so fast that she quickly had to jump up on one of the high stones by the bridge to avoid being run down. She was still half a child, thin and delicate, but with a blessed expression on her face and two pretty clear eyes, but the lord of the manor didn’t look at that. At the great pace he was traveling, he turned his whip in his hand and in coarse merriment, he poked her with the shaft right in the chest so she fell over backwards.
“Everything in its proper place!” he yelled, “into the dirt you go!” and then he laughed. It was supposed to be so funny, and the others laughed too. The whole party was yelling and screeching, and the hunting dogs were barking. It really was “rich birds come a’whistling,” but God knows how rich he still was then.
The poor goose girl reached out as she fell and grasped one of the over-hanging willow branches. She was able to hold herself up from the mud, and as soon as the hunting party and the dogs were well inside the gate, she struggled to pull herself up. But the branch broke off at the top, and the goose girl fell heavily backwards in the reeds just as a strong hand from above grabbed her. It was an itinerant peddler who had seen what had happened from a distance and had hurried to help her.
“Everything in its proper place,” he said in jest, mimicking her master, and pulled her up on dry land. He put the broken branch back in the place where it had broken off, but “in its proper place” doesn’t always work! So then he stuck the branch down in the soft earth—“grow if you can and may a flute cut from you make that master pay the piper!” He thought that the master and his friends deserved a whipping. Then the peddler went up to the manor, but not to the main hall—he wasn’t good enough for that. He went to the folks in the servants’ quarters, and they looked at his wares and bargained with him. But from the banquet hall came yells and bawling. It was supposed to be singing, but they weren’t good at it. There was laughter and barking of dogs, gorging and boozing. Wine and old beer foamed in the glasses and mugs, and the pet dogs feasted too. The young noblemen kissed first one and then another of them, after they first wiped the dogs’ snouts with their long ears. The peddler was called up to show his wares, but only so they could make fun of him. When the wine goes in, the wit goes out. They poured beer into a stocking for him so he could drink with them, but quickly! It was all so very clever and witty! And whole herds of cattle and farms with farmers too were bet and lost on just one card.
“Everything in its proper place,” said the peddler when he was well away from “Sodom and Gomorra,” as he called it. “The open road is my proper place. I was really out of place up there.” The little goose girl nodded to him from the fence.
And days went by and weeks passed, and it turned out that the broken willow branch that the peddler had stuck down in the moat stayed fresh and green. It even put out new shoots. The little goose girl realized that it must have taken root, and she was very happy about it. It seemed to her that it was her tree.
Well, the tree thrived, but nothing else on the estate did, with the guzzling and the gambling that went on. Those are two stilts that aren’t easy to stand on.
It wasn’t even six years before the lord of the manor wandered away from the estate with a sack and a staff as a poor man. The manor was bought by a rich peddler, the very same man who had been the object of ridicule and offered beer in a stocking. But honesty and hard work bring prosperity, and now the peddler was lord of the manor. From that day forward, no card playing was allowed there. “Cards are poor reading,” he said. “And that’s because, when the devil first saw the Bible, he wanted to make one like it, and he invented card playing.”
The new master took a wife, and who do you think it was? It was the little goose girl, who had always been good-natured, gentle, and kind. And in her new clothes she was so fine and beautiful as if she had been born an aristocratic lady. How did all this happen? Well, it’s too long a story for our busy times, but it happened, and the most important part comes later.
Now there was happiness and prosperity on the old estate. Mother was in charge of the house, and father the farm. Blessings poured down upon them, and money makes money. The old buildings were renovated and painted. The moats were cleaned out, and fruit trees were planted. Everything looked so pleasant and nice. The living room floor was as shiny as a bread board. In the winter evenings the mistress sat with her maids in the big hall spinning wool and linen. Every Sunday evening the Bible was read aloud, and that by the councilman himself. Yes, the peddler became a councilman—but not until he was quite old. The children grew—there were children—and they were all well educated, but they didn’t have equal brains of course, just as in every family.
And the willow branch out there had become a fine, large tree that stood free and untrimmed. “That’s our family tree,” the old folks said, and they told their children, even the less bright ones, that the tree was to be respected and honored.
And a hundred years went by.
Now it was our own time. The lake had become a bog, and it was as if the old manor house had been erased. There was an oblong puddle of water with some stone circles on the side. Those were the remains of the deep moat, and there was still a grand old tree standing there with stooped branches. It was the family tree. It showed how beautiful a weeping willow can be when it is allowed to get along on its own. True, the trunk had split, right from the root up to the crown. Storms had twisted it a little, but it was standing, and grass and flowers were growing from all the cracks and crevices where wind and weather had deposited humus. It was like an entire little hanging garden with raspberries and chickweed, especially at the top, where the big branches divided. Even a tiny little rowan-berry tree had rooted there and stood so slender and delicate right up in the middle of the old willow tree. The tree was mirrored in the black water when the wind drove the duckweed to the other corner of the pond. A little path over the meadows went right by the tree.
High on a hill by the forest, with a wonderful view, lay the new manor house, large and splendid, with windows so clear that you would think there was no glass in them. The big stairs by the door looked like they were wearing an arbor of roses and large-leafed plants. The lawn was so perfectly green that it looked as if each blade was tended both morning and night. Expensive paintings hung in the hall inside, and there were silk and velvet chairs and couches that could almost walk on their own legs. There were tables with shiny marble tops and books of fine leather with gilt edges. Rich people lived here, distinguished people—the baron and his family.
And one matched the other. “Everything in its proper place!” they also said, and because of that all the pictures that had once been the pride and joy of the old manor house were now hanging in the servants’ wing. They were real junk, especially two old portraits, one of a man in a rosy red coat and a wig, and the other of a lady with
