There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard, tough limbs which bear it.

November 19. 

P. M. — Mocker-nutting, to Conantum. 

The lambkill and water andromeda are turned quite dark red where much exposed; in shelter are green yet. 

Those long mocker-nuts appear not to have got well ripe this year. They do not shed their husks, and the meat is mostly skinny and soft and flabby. Perhaps the season has been too cold. 

I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them. How hard they rattle down, like stones! There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard, tough limbs which bear it. 

I was surprised to see how much the hickory-tops had been bent and split, apparently by ice, tough as they are. They seem to have suffered more than evergreens do. 

The husks of one tree scarcely gaped open at all, and could not be removed. 

I did not think at first why these nuts had not been gathered, but I suspect it may be because Puffer, who probably used to get them, has committed suicide.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 19, 1858

I shook the trees. It is just the time to get them. See November 18, 1858 ("Now is the time to gather the mocker-nuts.") November 7, 1853 (“I shook two mocker-nut trees; one just ready to drop its nuts, and most came out of the shells. But the other tree was not ready; only a part fell, and those mostly in the shells.”)

Puffer has committed suicide. See May 17, 1858 (“While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered.”) See also  November 8, 1858 ("He committed suicide within a week, at his sister’s house in Sudbury. A boy slept in the chamber with him, and, hearing a noise, got and found __ on the floor with both his jugular veins cut.")