In a certain city, in a certain state, there once lived a merchant Nicholas with his wife. From the beginning they lived happily and were wealthy. But their chief joy was in this: that the Lord had presented them with a son, and such a beautiful son too! Sensible and wiseā āand the only prayer which the mother and father addressed to God and to his holy godfather St. Nicholas the Wonder-Worker, was that they should endow him with happiness and long life.
But, as old age crept on, they, for some reason, began to become poor; and they became so poor that Nicholas, from a famous merchant, became a mere tradesman, and they only had one little shop, and in the shop there was a chest of tobacco, a few nails, and a little iron. And either from the fact that they were growing poorer, or that they were becoming older, the mother and father of IvĆ”nā āfor this was the name of Nicholasās sonā āhad become feeble.