Mr. Fawcett, M.P., made a remarkable speech to a gathering
of 150 blind persons at the Victoria Park Tabernacle last Tuesday. He told them how much he thought it possible for a blind man to do which the blind do not usually attempt. He was twenty-five years of age before the accident occurred which deprived him of his sight, but he very Goon determined to pur- sue his career, so far as was possible, without reference to the new privation, following the same pursuits, and enjoying, so far as he might, the same pleasures. No man, he says, can enjoy • more than he does catching a salmon in the Tweed or the Spey ; or angling in a Hampshire trout-stream. No man can enjoy more than he does a gallop on the turf, or a skate of even 60 miles on the Cambridgeshire Fens. He was strongly in favour of the blind earning their own livelihood. "Do not," he said, "shut them up in institutions, do not sever them from all the pleasures and associations of home. To them, not less than to those who can see, the home life has its indes- cribable joys." In short, without sight, in a world of men who see, it was very possible, said Mr. Fawcett, for the blind to en- joy most of the advantages of sight. And of this, Mr. Fawcett's own distinguished career is a sufficient and absolute pledge.
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