ards the end of 1869.
But though the volume showed a great advance in quality upon its
predecessor, it was a commercial failure, and the publisher lost ninety
pounds over it.

In Melbourne, Kendall wrote prose, as well as satirical and serious
verse, for most of the papers. The payment was small; in fact, only a
few newspapers then paid anything for verse. He made a little money by
writing the words for a cantata, "Euterpe", sung at the opening of the
Melbourne Town Hall in 1870. At the office of 'The Colonial Monthly',
edited by Marcus Clarke, he met the best of the Melbourne literati, and,
though his reserved manner did not encourage intimacy, one of
them--George Gordon McCrae--became a close and true friend. Lindsay
Gordon, too, admired Kendall's poems, and learned to respect a man whose
disposition was in some ways like his own. 'Bush Ballads and Galloping
Rhymes' appeared in June, 1870, and Kendall received an advance copy and
wrote a laudatory review for 'The Australasian'. He and Gordon spent
some hours on the day of publication, discussing the book and poetry in
general. Both were depressed by the apparent futility of literary effort
in Australia, where nearly everyone was making haste to be rich. Next
morning Gordon shot himself--tired of life at thirty-seven! Kendall knew
how Harpur's last long illness had been saddened by the knowledge that
the public was utterly indifferent to his poems; he had seen the wreck
of the once brilliant Deniehy; and now the noble-hearted Gordon had
given up the struggle.

To these depressing influences, and the hardships occasioned by a meagre
and uncertain income, was added a new grief--the loss of his first-born,
Araluen, whose memory he enshrined years afterwards in a poem of
pathetic tenderness. He returned to Sydney early in 1871, broken in
health and spirit. The next two years were a time of tribulation,
during which, as he said later on, he passed into the shadow, and
emerged only through the devotion of his wife and the help of the
brothers Fagan, timber merchants, of Brisbane Water. Kendall was the
Fagans' guest at Narrara Creek, near Gosford, and afterwards filled a
clerical position in the business which one of the brothers established
at Camden Haven. There he spent seven tranquil years with his wife and
family, and wrote the best of his poems. In some of these he said all
that need be said against himself, for he was always frankly critical of
his conduct and