`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 work.

In his later years Kendall tasted some of the sweets of success.
He wrote the words of the opening Cantata sung at