[jQuery] Get contents of first child tr, td with class

[Mark Steudel]

I have a table like so:

<table id="recent_activity">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>t1</th>
<th>t2</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>value</td>
<td class="date">2008-09-01</td> <--- want this content
</tr>
<tr>
<td>value</td>
<td class="date">2008-09-01</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

And I want to try and get the first td with class date, I've tried the
following and I get close, but I think I'm just missing something
easy:

$('#recent_activity tbody:first-child .activity_date').val(); <--
returns undefined

or

$('#recent_activity tbody:first-child .activity_date').html(); <--
returns null

Thoughts? Better way?

Thanks