You must remember that we are three thousand miles from the ocean.

From A treasury of American anecdotes; sly, salty, shaggy stories of heroes and hellions, beguilers and buffoons, spellbinders and scapegoats, gagsters and gossips, from the grassroots and sidewalks of America by Benjamin Albert Botkin. 

A Boston woman . . . was planning her first trip to the West. The travel agent asked, “How would you like to go? By Buffalo?” “Why, really,” replied the lady, “I planned to go by train.”

Two women from Boston . . . were riding across the prairie and came upon a lone tombstone with the simple inscription: “John Jones—he came from Boston.” They looked at it reverently, and finally one said, “How brief, but how sufficient.”

Two Boston women . . . went to the San Francisco Fair and ran into a hot spell. As they were stewing on Treasure Island, one said to the other, “My dear, I never expected to be so hot in San Francisco.” “But, my dear,” replied her companion, “you must remember that we are three thousand miles from the ocean.”

A colleague from Leland Stanford . . . insisted that once, when he was having tea in a Boston home, the lady of the house inquired, “How long did it take you to come from Leland Stanford to Boston?” “About four days,” replied my friend, “at least I was four nights on the train .” “Why, really,” said his hostess, “I never was on a train so long in my life. But then, of course, I’m here already.”