Henry David Thoreau on Tenancy

As my neighbors stomp away above me and rearrange their furniture daily and my landlord has the nerve to ask for rent monthly, this walden passage makes me seek a simpler, less luxurious box.

I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night;
and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free.
This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent.
Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this.