Stratford lies just at the beginning of the fruit-growing country, which stretches right down the Vale of Evesham to Worcester and the Severn; and little Will Shakspere was well versed in the merits of all kinds of fruits. There were the plum-trees, that make you think in the spring-time that a snow-shower has fallen upon a sunny day all over the Stratford district; while in the autumn the branches are laden with "the mellow plum." Who can doubt that little Will climbed the damson-tree, "with danger of my life," as he said later that Simpcox did at his wife's bidding?[B] In the plays he mentions apples of many sorts--some of which, though rare or extinct in other parts of England, still grow about his native place--the bitter-sweetings and leather-coats, the apple-johns and the pomewaters. Many a time he must have stood with all the boys of the place watching, as we might do to-day, the cider-making on some village green, when the heaps of apples, red, green, and yellow, are brought in barrows and baskets and carts from the orchards, and ground up into a thick yellow pulp in the crushing-mill turned by a horse, and that pulp is put into presses from which the clear juice runs into tubs, while the dry cakes of pulp are carted away to fatten the pigs. [Footnote B: 2d Henry VI., Act 2, Scene 1.] There were grapes, too, growing plentifully in Warwickshire in his day; and "apricocks," "ripe figs, and mulberries," like those with which the fairies were told to feed Bottom the weaver. Blackberries and the handsome purple dewberries grew then as now, by the hedges in the orchards and in the shade of the Weir-brake just below Stratford mill, where, so says tradition, the scene of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" was laid. In the Weir-brake, too, and in all the woods about their home, the Shakspere boys must have gone nutting--that most delightful harvest of the year, when you bend down "the hazel twig," so "straight and slender," and fill baskets and pockets with the sweet nuts in their rough, green husks, and crack them all the way home like so many happy squirrels. [Illustration: THE GUILD COUNCIL-ROOM--NOW THE HEAD-MASTER'S CLASS-ROOM.] All the hedge-rows were full then, as they are to this day, of wild pear-trees, wild apples, and "crabs," as crab-apples are called in England. Roasted "crabs" served with hot ale were a favorite Christmas dish in Shakspere's time. And I doubt not that the boys rejoiced at the house in Henley street as the time of year came round "when roasted crabs hiss in the bowl."