Page:Facts and Fancies about Our "Son of the Woods", Henry Clarence Kendall and his Poetry (IA factsfanciesabou00hami).pdf/32

26 "His laurels in the pit were won, He had to take the lot austere, That ever seems to wait upon The man of letters here.

His soul was self-withdrawn; he made A secret of his bitter life Of struggle in inelement shade, For helpless child and wife.

He toiled for love, unwatched, unseen, And fought his troubles hand by hand Till, like a friend of gentle mien, Death took him by the hand.

He rests in peace—no grasping thief Of hope and health can steal away The beauty of the flower and leaf, Upon his tomb to-day."

It was in referring to Kendall's verses on Marcus Clarke that I remember Mr. Richard Birnie spoke of the works of that writer admiringly. He quoted Kendall's words, "The eyes of Marcus Clark," and gave us, his select audience (my husband and myself), an essay extempore in Collins Street East, as was his custom whenever we met leisurely out of doors, just after dining "au restaurant," which happened very often in those days. I regarded these impromptu essays (enriched with quotations from almost every standard author, and in various languages) as my most valuable lessons in literature and in elocution. I remember Mr. Birnie telling me, with a suspicious twinkle in his eye (as if slyly laughing at his own frequent "deliveries" in Collins Street to the "select audience" just referred to), that a speaker's desire should be for "fit audience, though few." Fortunately, the police in those days were much more gentlemanly and forhearing than they would be now, under similar circumstances, for we were never ordered "to move on." The essays were begun and ended on the Collins Street pavements, generally at the Town Hall