Further notice of his work appeared in the `Athenaeum' during
the next four years, and in 1866 it was generously praised
by Mr. G. B. Barton in his `Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales'.

Meanwhile in August, 1863, Kendall was, through Parkes' influence,
appointed to a clerkship in the Surveyor-General's Department
at one hundred and fifty pounds a year, and three years later
was transferred to the Colonial Secretary's Office at two hundred pounds
a year. During this period he read extensively, and wrote much verse.
By 1867 he had so far overcome his natural shyness that he undertook
to deliver a series of lectures at the Sydney School of Arts.
One of these, on "Love, Courtship and Marriage", precipitated him
into experience of all three; for he walked home after the lecture
with Miss Charlotte Rutter, daughter of a Government medical officer,
straightway fell in love, and, after a brief courtship, they were married
in the following year.

The year 1868 was a memorable one for Kendall in other ways. In April,
James Lionel Michael was found dead in the Clarence River, and in June
Charles Harpur died at Euroma. Kendall had a great admiration
for Harpur's poems and wrote to him in the spirit of a disciple.
They corresponded for some years, but did not meet until a few months
before the elder poet's death. Kendall describes Harpur
as then "a noble ruin -- scorched and wasted by the fire of sorrow."

In 1868, also, a prize was offered in Melbourne for
the best Australian poem, the judge being Richard Hengist Horne,
author of `Orion'. Kendall sent in three poems and Horne
awarded the prize to "A Death in the Bush". In an article printed
in Melbourne and Sydney newspapers he declared that the author