Even his friends, to say nothing of Louisa, occasionally poked fun at him for chronicling so minutely all his thoughts. Ellery Channing called his library, "Encyclopediea de Moi-meme, en cents volumes." Yet these journals and records are now worth more than the fine library he collected and in which he delighted. Emerson has thus described the origin of the Fruitlands community: On the invitation of James P. Greaves of London, the friend and fellow-laborer of Pestalozzi in Switzerland, Mr. Alcott went to England in 1842. Mr. Greaves died before his arrival, but Mr. Alcott was received cordially by his friends, who had given his name to their school, Alcott House, Ham, near London. He spent several months in making acquaintance with various classes of reformers. On his return to America, he brought with him two of his English friends, Chas. Lane and H. C. Wright; and Mr. Lane having bought a farm which he called Fruitlands, at Harvard, Mass., they all went there to found a new community. The Fruitlands experiment and its failure have been immortalized by Louisa Alcott in her "Transcendental Wild Oats." The detail of it is thus described by a friend of the Alcott family, who had the story from Bronson Alcott himself: The crop failures necessitated the community living on a barley diet, as anything animal was not allowed, not even milk and eggs. Now and then they gave a thought as to what they should do for shoes when those they had were gone; for depriving the cow of her skin was a crime not to be tolerated. The barley crop was injured in harvesting, and before long want was staring them in the face. The Alcotts remained at Fruitlands till mid-winter in dire poverty, all the guests having taken their departure as provisions vanished. Friends came to the rescue, and, Mr. Alcott concluded with pathos in his voice, "We put our little women on an ox-sled and made our way to Concord! So faded one of the dreams of my youth. I have given you the facts as they were; Louisa has given the comic side in 'Transcendental Wild Oats'; but Mrs. Alcott could give you the tragic side." Indeed, it was always Mrs. Alcott who could have given the tragic side, skillfully as she kept her worries hidden. Her own family, indignant because Bronson Alcott could not better provide the material needs for his family, on more than one occasion besought the faithful wife to leave him. A letter from her brother, urging this step, drew forth from her a defense of Bronson Alcott which the husband enters in his journal as follows: November 1840 Passages of a letter from my wife to one who misapprehends and perverts my life and purposes.