The Miserly Farmer

As a farmer carted pears to the market, a monk with a torn cap and tattered robe happened along and asked for one. The farmer repulsed him, but the monk did not leave, at which the farmer began to insult him. The monk said: “You have pears by the hundred in your cart. Giving away one will not injure you. Why are you so angry?”

The bystanders told the farmer that he ought to give the monk a pear, but the farmer refused. An artisan saw the whole affair, and since the noise annoyed him, he bought a pear and offered it to the monk.

The monk thanked him and said, “I do not have much, but I will not be miserly. I have beautiful pears, and I invite you all to eat them with me, but first I must have a seed to plant.”

He ate the pear, then used his pick-ax to dig a hole and plant a seed. The seed sprouted and grew. In a moment, it had turned into a tree, which blossomed and soon bore large, fragrant pears. The monk climbed into the tree and handed down the pears to the bystanders. Then the monk cut down the tree, shouldered the trunk, and walked away.

At first, the farmer gaped and stared, entirely forgetting the business he hoped to do with his pears. When the monk had wandered off, the farmer turned around and discovered the pears in his cart had all disappeared; the pears the monk had divided had been his own. He looked more closely and noticed the handle of his cart had been recently chopped off. Enraged, the farmer ran after the monk. Turning the corner, he spied the missing piece from the handle tossed along the side of the road. He then realized the pear tree, which the monk had chopped down, had been his handle. The monk was nowhere to be found.