JOSEPH WARREN was born in 1741, in the village of Roxbury, one or two miles south from Boston, Mass. His father, a rich farmer, inhabited a house, the ruins of which are still visible; and was famous for raising the best fruit in that neighborhood. He was killed by a fall from one of his own apple trees, leaving a widow and four sons, of whom Joseph, the eldest, was 16, and John, the youngest, was 4 years old. This excellent woman appears to have much resembled the mother of Washington, in the skill and care with which she infused generous sentiments and virtuous principles into the bosoms of her children: and she reaped almost as richly as Mrs. Washington, the fruits of her labors. Her sons passed through life, all honored and loved, and more than one of them distinguished. Her nature seems to have had more of amiable softness than Mrs. Washington's; who, it must be confessed, blended something of the sternness with the purity and nobleness of a Spartan matron. Mrs. Warren's door was always open for deeds of hospitality and neighborly kindness. It is not easy to imagine a lovelier scene than one paragraph presents, of the evening of a well spent life, still warmed and brightened by the benign spirit, which had been the sun of that life's long day. "In her old age, when her own children had left her fireside, it was one of her dearest pleasures to gather a group of _their_ children, or of the children of others around her. She did all in her power to promote their enjoyment, and her benevolent smile was always ready to encourage them. On Thanksgiving-day,[1] she depended on having all her children and grand children with her; and _until she was 80 years of age, she herself made the pies with which the table was loaded!_ Not satisfied with feasting them to their heart's content while they were with her, she always had some nice great pies ready for them to take home with them." [Footnote 1: _Thanksgiving-day_ is in New England, what Christmas is in the Southern States and England. It is always in November, on a day fixed by Proclamation of the Governor of each State, in each year. Christmas, from the anti-Catholic zeal of the Puritan Pilgrims, is almost entirely neglected; being, with all its train of quips, cranks, gambols and mince-pies, thought to savor too strongly of popery.] Joseph's education, till his fourteenth year, was at the public school in Roxbury; one of those _common schools_, which, from the earliest times of New England, have been planting and nurturing in her soil the seeds and shoots of virtue and freedom. Even in boyhood, our hero was manly, fearless and generous: always taking the part of his weaker school-fellows against a strong oppressor--always the "village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood."