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PRACTICAL JOKING OF EUGENE VIVIER.
"A MOST GENTLEMANLY EMPEROR."
How the Calf Which This Famous Hornplayer
Put in His Apartment Became
in Time an Ox.
Henry Sutherland Edwards, a London journalist, who died a short time ago, published in 1900 a volume of "Personal Recollections" which is very much alive with anecdotes of men of the past generation. Considerable space is given to a man who is now almost unremembered—Eugene Vivier, the hornplayer, "the most charming of men and the spoiled child of nearly every court in Europe." Vivier is the man who said of Napoleon III, "He is the most gentlemanly emperor I know."
"What can I do for you?" said this gentlemanly emperor one day, when Vivier had gone to see him at the Tuileries.
"Come out on the balcony with me, sire," replied the genial cynic. "Some of my creditors are sure to be passing, and it will do me good to be seen in conversation with your majesty."
Vivier was a confirmed practical joker. Once, while riding in an omnibus, he pretended to be mad.
He indulged in the wildest gesticulations, and then, as if in despair, drew a pistol from his pocket. The conductor was called upon by acclamation to interfere, and Vivier was on the point of being disarmed when suddenly he broke the pistol in two, handed half to the conductor and began to eat the other half himself. It was made of chocolate!