COOKE, DONALD E. Nutcracker of Nuremberg.

To cut the nut neatly an instrument is used like an enormous pair of nutcrackers with a sharp cutting edge.

He prefaced almost everything he said with, "When I was High Sheriff," so I asked him innocently enough how many times he had been High Sheriff, on which my host, being a quick-witted man, looked at him with a broad grin, while he balanced the nutcrackers on his forefinger.