After Smith's death he addressed letters to Smith's relatives, and received one answer from a sister of Melissa's mother.

Thanking the master, she stated her intention of leaving the Atlantic States for California with her husband in a few months.

This was a slight superstructure for the airy castle which the master pictured for Mliss's home, but it was easy to fancy that some loving, sympathetic woman, with the claims of kindred, might better guide her wayward nature.

Yet, when the master had read the letter, Mliss listened to it carelessly, received it submissively, and afterward cut figures out of it with her scissors, supposed to represent Clytemnestra, labeled "the white girl," to prevent mistakes, and impaled them upon the outer walls of the schoolhouse.
When the summer was about spent, and the last harvest had been gathered in the valleys, the master bethought him of gathering in a few ripened shoots of the young idea, and of having his Harvest Home, or Examination.

So the savants and professionals of Smith's Pocket were gathered to witness that time-honored custom of placing timid children in a constrained positions and bullying them as in a witness box.