We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
– Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapter 18. Huck has just escaped from the Grangerford-Stepherdson feud and is sickened by society. To him the raft on the Mississippi represents freedom, simplicity and a retreat from the rules, constraints and judgments of the outside world.