‘I went with him,’ says Mr. Dryhurst, ‘to a tea-meeting at Bethnal Green. It was night, and the Assembly Hall, which was low, was crowded with over one thousand blind people and their guides. Fawcett, who spoke briefly, was greeted with fervent enthusiasm when he entered, and when, in the course of the speech he exclaimed in his thundering voice, ‘Do not wall us up in institutions, but let us live as other men live,’ the excitement of the audience and the animation of the blind faces, was something which I shall never forget.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: A Leader out of Darkness.] While at Cambridge preparing this book, the writer was sent for by a blind lady whom she did not know. She was old and ill in bed, but in happier times she had known Fawcett, who had often dined at her house. Recently she also had lost her sight, and she evidently felt that she had a debt to the great blind man who had been her friend when she could see. She wished the relief of expressing her indebtedness, as in her weak voice she struggled to say: ‘I wanted to tell you that in my life no one has helped me as much as Mr. Fawcett; his help is constant even now.’ Fawcett had always lived so that he might be strong and attain. He was careful of his diet, exercise and clothing; of this last to such a degree that his friends, as we know, loved to poke fun at him for his precautions against chills. Tradition tells of two suits of underclothing being superimposed while in an express train London-bound on his way to the Houses of Parliament. We are given a glimpse of him at this time by a friend: ‘Coming towards me I saw a man leaning on the arm of his companion, and walking with a smiling upturned face, as though he were watching the clouds of smoke from a small but exceedingly fragrant cigar.’ [Sidenote: The Wear of Work.] He seemed now quite his old self again in mind and body, though he would often return home exhausted from his work, and when Mrs. Fawcett read to him he would frequently fall fast asleep. On one occasion she was reading to him the biography of some distinguished man, and had come to a passage where the author was describing a moonlight scene, when Fawcett, waking from a nap, interrupted the peaceful picture with the exclamation, ‘I always said he was a sagacious old fool.’ [Sidenote: Honours.] It was natural that when his achievements had won him such wide popularity and distinction he should receive many of those tokens which most men cherish. Oxford gave him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law; Würzburg, on its tricentenary celebration, made him Doctor of Political Economy; he was elected a corresponding member of the section of political economy of the Institute of France; the Royal Society elected him to a Fellowship, and in 1883, a year after his illness, the University of Glasgow gave him an LL.D. and elected him their Lord Rector, the other candidates being Lord Bute and Mr. Ruskin.