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Daily 
Warm-Up
15
Fiction: Fairy Tales/Folklore
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.
Text Questions
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 1 . Why was the farmer enraged?
a. The bystanders made fun of him.
b. The monk asked for a pear.
c. The monk gave his pears to the people in the market.
d. The monk chopped down the pear tree.