a4 THE HISTORY OF A NUT-CRACKER.

and the ticket-porters; when a waggon, heavily laden, passed
over the bag of nuts. Upon seeing this accident, which they
attributed to the justice of heaven, the merchants considered
that they were sufficiently avenged, and left the stranger
alone. He picked up his bag, and all his nuts were found:
to be cracked, save ONE—one only—which he handed to me
with a strange.kind of smile, requesting me to buy it for a
new zwanziger of the year 1720, and declaring that the day
would come when ‘I should
not repent the bargain, dear
as it then might seem. I
felt in my pocket, and was
much surprised to find a
zwanziger of the kind men-
tioned by this man. The co-
incidence seemed so strange,
that I gave him my zwanzi- —
ger; he handed me the nut,
and took his departure.
“T placed the nut in my vy
window for sale; and although I only asked two kreutzers
more than the money I had given for it, it remained in the
ae window for seven or eight
years without finding a
purchaser. I:then had it
gilt to increase its value;
*. ‘but fowtltat purpose I use-
() ‘lessly spentitwo zwanzigers
fy more; forthe nut has been
“here-ever sinee'the day I
‘bought it.”
‘At that moment the astro-
momer, ‘in whose hands the
‘nut ‘had -remained, uttered
a cry of joy. While Master Drosselmayer was listening to
his brother’s story, the astrologer had delicately scraped off