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Southland Times, Volume 2, Issue 63, 16 June 1863, Page 3

A Clerical Error. — It is said, I knownot with what truth, that the slyle of the ! new Emperor was the result of a clerical error. In the course of its preparations for constituting the Empire, the Home Office wished the country to take up a word which should he intermediate between " President" and " Emperor," so the Minister determined to order that France should suddenly burst into a cry of "Vive Napoleon I" and he wrote, they say, the following ojder, " Que 1^ mot d'ordre soit Vive Napoleon. !!! •' The clerk, they say, mistook the three notes of admiration for Roman numerals, and in a few- hours the forty thousand communes of France had cried out .«o obediently for " Napoleon III.," that the Government was obliged to adopt the cleric's blunder. — Kinglakes Invasion of ths Crimea. Horace Vernet's Portraiture. — Horace Vernet would have been invaluable as a detective draughtsman ; if he once had a good jook at a man, he could, from memory, produce a striking- likeness. It j was a happy knack he had, and sometimes an unfortunate knack, for, unconscious!}-, he would associate certain people's features with particular acls. If he represented in one battle-piece a soldier flying, with fear and terror expressed on his countenatice, his crayon would, in spite of himself, tea-e the familiar features of some well-known personage who had distinguished himseif by a lack of pluck ; and in one of his grand pictures, wishing to represent a rapacious, grasping Israelite, he drew the features of a contemporary, whom many will recognise at the first glance. I have said this was sometimes an unfortunate knack, because it has occasionally got him into (rouble. — Dickens's All the Year Round. An unlucky private in one of the New York regiments was wounded in the fight, and his father arrived at the hospital just, as the surgeon was removing the ball from the back of the shoulder. The boy lay with his back downward on the pallet. '' Ah, my po° r son," said the father, mournfully, " I'm very sorry for you. It's a bad place to be hurt in, thus in the back." The sufferer turned over, bared his breast, and pointing to the opening above the armpit, exclaimed, " Father, here's where the ball "Went in." A man who squinted but was unaware of his infirmity, had his portrait taken by Nicholson, and, on being invited to inspect the performance, said, Avith rather a disappointed air, " I don't know — it seems to me — does it squint?" — •' Squint !" replied Nicholson, "no more than you do." — " Really ! well, you know best, of course ; but I declare I fancied there was a queer look about it!" — Miners* {Potlsville) Journal.