The constant society of his wife and other brilliant women of her family and her friends, impressed him with the great benefit that it would be to the community to have the assistance of their votes, as expressing their fair and able minds. He said concerning women’s voting: ‘The Parliamentary suffrage should be applied to those women who fulfil the qualifications of property and residence demanded from the elector. That is to say, if a widow or a spinster is in possession of a house, and pays rates and taxes, she should have the borough vote, and if she possesses freehold or leasehold property, she should have a county vote, as if it were held by a man.’ [Sidenote: The Uses of Adversity.] We have dwelt on the great part that Fawcett’s blindness played in forming his character. It intensified his bravery and determination, broadened his sympathies, sharpened his observation, made his memory keener, quickened his intellect, and gave him a greater power to conquer himself and others. Affliction had given him strength as of steel well tempered, to withstand and pierce all muddled thought and murky sentiment, and so make the clear under-light of his soul a shining beacon to all who knew him. But there were, inevitably, quiet moments, when, all efforts unavailing, his blindness must have weighed heavily upon him. Seated by his fireside, feeling the glow which he might never see, he would listen to the crackling of the coal and the ticking of the clock as it marked a minute less of his darkness. Such hours had to be fought through single-handed, by his own courage and strength of will. [Sidenote: Hearth and Home.] No small part of his triumph over circumstance was due to the great affections and friendships which were at the heart of his life. Chiefest and most constant of these were his flawless devotion to his wife and daughter, and the singularly beautiful sympathy and companionship which he found at home. It is not for the biographer to intrude into this holy of holies—enough to know that Fawcett had with his wife that perfect understanding and fellowship, that entire sympathy and intellectual inspiration, which, when he was most sorely tried, gave him a sure haven of rest and happiness from which to start forth again, better armed and braver, to battle anew. When Mrs. Fawcett was absent, her husband would postpone a decision of great moment until he was able to get her opinion. She often acted as his secretary, and in all matters was his trusted counsellor. In later years, his daughter Philippa, whose great talent was a source of deep interest to him, completed with her brilliant intellect and happy wit this perfectly attuned trio. There is a poetic justice that Fawcett having fought so for the admission of women students at Cambridge, it was left for his daughter to achieve the highest mathematical honours bestowed on any woman in Great Britain, when as a student at Newnham she won four hundred marks above the Senior Wrangler.