Doctor Wright had exceptional advantages for his labor of love. In his childhood his nurse told him the traditions of the Brontes; his tutor was full of recollections of the father, uncles, and grandfather of the novelists. As a student he wrote screeds of the Bronte novels in place of essays, having first been told the incidents and events by his tutor. His recollections, extending back to the early part of this century, have been strengthened by years of patient investigation. During different years Doctor Wright has spent several months at a time in Ireland, following up obscure traces of the family, hunting down traditions connected with the Brontes, or carefully verifying minute points derived from his own recollections or the reports of others. The result of these painstaking researches, which have extended over a lifetime, is an authentic narrative of great human interest. The unadorned history of the family reads like a Bronte novel. The adventures, the hairbreadth escapes, the struggles, the kidnapping, the abuse, which figure in these chapters are stranger than fiction. The courtship, elopement, and marriage of Hugh Bronte with Alice McGlory form one of the most extraordinary narratives of love and adventure that has ever been penned. The half-humorous, half-pathetic, but always intensely interesting, descriptions of the ancestors of the Bronte sisters, their peculiarities, the superstition with which some of them were regarded as masters of the black art, the respect that they commanded as fighters and singers and workmen, the side-lights thrown upon the early and bitter contest over tenant rights, the exposition of strange religious beliefs--all of this, and more that cannot here even be hinted at, serve to present a curious and vivid picture of everyday life in a corner of Ireland one hundred years ago. These articles bring out the hereditary and surrounding influences which helped to shape the genius of Charlotte Bronte. Aside from the value which they have because they furnish a remarkable commentary on the work of the great novelist, they are pages of real life of fascination and remarkable interest. The first article will give a glimpse of the early Brontes and the singular weird story of that dark foundling who brought ruin to his benefactors, and whose machinations resulted in the absolute separation of Hugh Bronte, the grandfather of the novelists, from his parents--a separation so complete that he was never able to learn in what part of Ireland his father's family lived. Hugh Bronte was kidnapped when he was six years old. The strange narrative of his abduction will be given in the August number of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE. A STRANGE STORY: THE LOST YEARS LIZZIE HYER NEFF. I. Whether or not to relate the history that I now commence has been to me a seriously debated question.