Ralph Waldo Emerson writes to his wife Lidian, in New York:
Yesterday Mr Saml Ripley preached the farewell sermon to the old church, which goes down, the spire at least, this week. But your sinful household were for the most part worshipping each in his or her separate oratory in the woodlands—What is droll, Henry Thoreau was the one at church. This P.M. he carries Caroline [Sturgis Tappan] to Fairhaven in his boat.
(The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2:404)
