Life, as a spectacle, is but dimly seen and feebly comprehended; as a mystery, it is unfathomable indeed. Blown, as it were, a bubble--dark as the transgressions by which it is checkered, it bursts in an hour we know not, as the globe of glass is dashed into fragments. We look on the wreck, and wonder why it had a being, to gather in its train a multitudinous throng of evils, and make its exit in ignominy and shame. The author, it will be seen, is a fatalist--a believer in an unalterable destiny. It is unnecessary here to enter into a defence of that belief--he hopes that all people have an opinion of their own upon this, as on other subjects. Ye rich and great! ye poor and destitute--children of sin and wanderers from virtue--ye world wronged! cast your eyes over the panorama spread out to your view in the following pages, and, from the sounding depths of crime, learn lessons of wisdom. CHAPTER I. _Maria’s Birth--Strange Omens at the time of it--Speculations of the Old Maids and Old Women concerning the same--Singular Traits of her Youth--Mysterious Spiritual Visitings--Meditations in the Woods and Fields--Theology and Philosophy--Penitence--Remarks--What constitutes True Religion?_ Mrs. Maria Bickford was a native of Oldtown, a small parish near the city of Bangor, in Maine--the daughter of poor but respectable parents. Her maiden name was Dunn. She was born in the year 1822, and was, consequently, twenty-three years old at the period of her awful and untimely end. It is said of her, that, from earliest childhood, she had been the sport of ill omens and startling reverses. At her birth, which occurred before sunrise on a beautiful morning in autumn, a light of strange radiance shone into the apartment, and a sparrow fluttered against the window panes, uttering a plaintive wail, as if seeking admittance. Whether these occurrences were the results of unexplained natural causes, or were the foreshadowings of an invisible fate, the judgment is not for us to pronounce--perhaps a future life and another world will interpret them. But certain it is, that their recital made a most fruitful theme for conjecture with the wonder-loving neighborhood, at the time. Old maids tied their cap-strings with a double knot for many a night thereafter.[1] Old women spun long yarns while smoking their old-fashioned iron pipes in the chimney corners--and the old men scoffed at what they declared to be ridiculous. However it might have been, a marked singularity of thought and action was developed in the succeeding years of Maria’s youth. Her childish prattle was unlike that of other children--she saw not as others see--she heard not as others hear--she laughed not as others laugh--but in all and with all there seemed to be a new development--a strangeness.