Page:Facts and Fancies about Our "Son of the Woods", Henry Clarence Kendall and his Poetry (IA factsfanciesabou00hami).pdf/54

 For his one failing or weakness (and for which there were many excuses) he bitterly repented; he candidly confessed; he was no hypocrite; he never spared himself the whip or the scourge; and for that, no doubt, he is now wearing a crown of imperishable glory in the higher world, where even the honour and reward due to intellect and genius will pale into significance in the light of "the supremacy of the moral sentiments."

Not only was our "Son of the Woods" a good horseman and fond of rowing, but he was also a splendid swimmer, and could dive and tread water. He taught the children to swim in the river below their house at Camden Haven. Here the three youngest were born—Athol, Persia, and Roma. The eldest children then living, Fred and Frank, were, if I remember rightly, born in Sydney. As youths, when I met them, they remembered their father most affectionately, and told me their pleasant recollections of his pastime with them at Camden Haven, much of which has been repeated here almost in their own words; for they were both, then, intelligent boys (not at all shy), happily communicative, and seeming to take a very hearty pleasure in looking back upon those days with their father. There could be no question of his geniality with his children when not engaged with his writings, the success of which, financially, he was far more anxious about for their sakes than for his own.

His son Athol, or Atholston, was so named after King Atholston. When he was being "weaned," which was at Camden Haven, where the poet was then, as already stated, preparing some of his "Songs from the Mountains," Kendall, naturally, could not bear the crying of the child during the process of weaning because of his nervousness; and Athol had to be sent away across the river to a neighbour's. However, Kendall used to walk across a shallow part of the stream on stilts, taking one of the boys on his back, carrying the milk in a bottle for the child, lest he should not have the very freshest milk.