Storytelling Week 12: The Quaker's Story

The quaker was very excited. He had prepared an elaborate meal and was very much ready to eat it. He turned around to look at his impressive spread and quickly realized that something was different about his table, and was very perplexed about it. Something was missing, and he couldn't figure out what it was. He thought must just be going crazy, his table seemed to have a full spread. He ran through a mental checklist, to make sure that nothing was actually missing and that it was all inside his head. He had his napkins, plates, silverware, meat, but something was definitely missing. He looked around, scratched his head, then finally he realized what was wrong. His bread and cheese was gone! That was his favorite part of every meal and it was nowhere to be found. How could it have just disappeared? He shrugged it off, thinking that he might have just forgotten to get it from the store, it had been a very long day and he was tired.

The next day, he walked home from work quickly. He was hungry, and made sure that he grabbed bread and cheese from the local market so that he could enjoy it with his meal. Once again, he laid everything out, turned around for one second, and his cheese and bread were gone again. He looked everywhere, but it was no where to be found. The quaker began to get angry and closely inspected the area around him to find clues as to who was taking his food. He looked closely at the floor and saw small dog prints. He realized he had there was a small hole in the wall on the other side of the kitchen, and that a dog must have been sneaking into his house at dinner time and making off with his cheese and bread. He kind of admired the dog for having the nerve to sneak into his house, but his admiration quickly turned into anger again.

(Dog stealing food)

The next night, he was determined to not let the animal take his food. He tried to cover the hole up, but didn't have any tools to do the job well, so he just thought that he would scare the dog away. He wasn't exactly sure what he would do should he confront the dog, but he was tired of his bread and cheese being taken. You see, his religion believed that you must not put your hands on any one of God's creatures, and he fully intended to follow that rule. He would just make sure that the dog didn't take the bread and cheese and hopefully scare him enough so that he never came back.

The man waited and waited, but there was no sign of the dog. He left his hiding spot to run to the bathroom, and when he returned he found the dog in the middle of his kitchen, bread in mouth. The dog froze, the quaker froze, and the two just stared at each other for a second, until the dog decided to make a run for it.

The quaker got very angry, probably more angry than he had ever been in his life. He started yelling after the dog, but after realizing it wasn't going to stop, he started chasing after it. He got angrier and angrier because he couldn't catch up with the dog. As he was running, he saw large sticks, and picked them up to throw at the dog in hopes that he would stop. All of a sudden, he tripped over a large tree branch, and broke all of his bones. After his accident, the quaker realized his mistake, and vowed to never chase after an animal again.

Bibliography: This is based off the story "The Dog and the Quaker" by Sir Brooke Boothby.

Author's Note: This week I read Aesop's Fables and was having kind of a hard time finding a story to write about since some of the fables are very hard to understand because of their language. I really liked the story "The Dog and the Quaker", so I decided to expand more on it. The story is about a quaker who constantly has his bread and cheese stolen by a dog. Normally, he might have punished the dog for taking his food, but the Quaker religion believes that no one should put their hands on one of God's creations. The Quaker religion really promotes finding non-violent solutions to problems, so the Quaker didn't actually believe in harming the dog at first. So, once he finds the dog, he tries yelling at it, but once that doesn't work, he resorts to throwing things at it and ends up breaking all of his bones. He kind of defies his religion and does what he wants and ends up suffering the consequences. It was fun to create an entire story about "The Quaker and the Dog" and elaborate as to why he might have been so upset by the dog taking his bread and cheese. I would think that I'd be pretty mad if my food was being stolen too. It was an interesting story and fun to write about!