It is hardly possible to write of Mulhouse without consecrating a page
or two to M. Jean Dollfus, a name already familiar to some English
readers. The career of such a man forms part of contemporary history,
and for sixty years the great cotton-printer of Mulhouse, the
indefatigable philanthropist--the fellow-worker with Cobden,
Arles-Dufour, and others in the cause of Free Trade--and the ardent
patriot, had been before the world.

The year before my visit was celebrated, with a splendour that would be
ridiculed in a novel, the diamond wedding of the head of the numerous
house of Dollfus, the silver and the golden having been already kept in
due form.

Mulhouse might well be proud of such a fete, for it was unique, and the
first gala-day since the annexation. When M. Dollfus looked out of his
window in the morning, he found the familiar street transformed as if by
magic into a bright green avenue abundantly adorned with flowers. The
change had been effected in the night by means of young fir-trees
transplanted from the forest. The day was kept as a general holiday.
From an early hour the improvised avenue was thronged with visitors of
all ranks bearing cards, letters of congratulation or flowers. The great
Dollfus works were closed, and the five thousand workmen with their
wives, children and superannuated parents, were not only feasted but
enriched. After the banquet every man, woman and child received a present
in money, the oldest and those who had remained longest in the employ of
M. Dollfus being presented with forty francs. But the crowning sight of
the day was the board spread for the Dollfus family and the gathering of
the clan, as it may indeed be called. There was the head of the house,
firm as a rock still, in spite of his eighty-two years; beside him the
partner of sixty of those years, his devoted wife; next according to age,