Life & Wisdom Quote by Oliver Herford

Herford’s line lands like a well-mannered insult delivered with a smile: he praises Boston not for its charms, but for its utility as an exit ramp. The joke hinges on a sly grammatical trick. “Such a pleasant place” primes you for civic boosterism, then the sentence snaps into its real destination: “to get away from.” That pivot turns “pleasant” into a weaponized adjective, the kind New England politeness uses to smuggle in judgment without raising its voice.

The specific intent is comic deflation. Herford isn’t simply complaining about a city; he’s puncturing the romance of travel talk. People narrate departures as if they’re elegiac, tasteful, meaningful. He reframes them as a relief. The port becomes a stage for a private emotion most travelers have but rarely admit: the quiet thrill of leaving, the lightness that arrives the moment your obligations become shoreline.

The subtext also reads as a swipe at Boston’s reputation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: cultivated, moralizing, self-serious, proud of its refinement. Herford, a British-born writer who made his career in America, knew how to needle that “we know better” tone. The line implies that Boston’s greatest hospitality is facilitating your escape from its own judgment.

Context matters because “abroad” and “sail” evoke an era when international travel was slower, more ceremonious, and more class-coded. Herford uses that grandeur to set up a petty, human punchline: even the most elevated voyage begins with the simple pleasure of getting out of town.