Rafting

Vachel Lindsay's poem "The Raft" says "(this author)  in white / Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night". The contestant said ... Thor Heyerdahl.

I suppose Heyerdahl is someone you think of when you here "raft", but considering that Lindsay died in 1931, you'd do well to think back a ways. To another famous raft, and an author who wore white.

To Mark Twain, in fact.

(The poem is here.) A sample:

All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
The best they have to say, their sons forget.
But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
The Mississippi Valley’s laughing dream?
He is the artery that finds the sea
In this the land of slaves, and boys still free.
He is the river, and they one and all
Sail on his breast, and to each other call.

Come let us disgrace ourselves,
Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
And cinders at the schoolhouse fling.
Come let us disgrace ourselves,
And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
And Huck and Jim
And the Duke and the King.