good inns you pay dearly for luxuries; in bad
inns you are fleeced and starved.

HASTINGS. You have lived very much among them. In truth, I have been
often surprised, that you who have seen so much of the world, with your
natural good sense, and your many opportunities, could never yet
acquire a requisite share of assurance.

MARLOW. The Englishman's malady. But tell me, George, where could I
have learned that assurance you talk of? My life has been chiefly
spent in a college or an inn, in seclusion from that lovely part of the
creation that chiefly teach men confidence. I don't know that I was
ever familiarly acquainted with a single modest woman--except my
mother--But among females of another class, you know----

HASTINGS. Ay, among them you are impudent enough of all conscience.

MARLOW. They are of US, you know.

HASTINGS. But in the company of women of reputation I never saw such
an idiot, such a trembler; you look for all the world as if you wanted
an opportunity of stealing out of the room.

MARLOW. Why, man, that's because I do want to steal out of the room.
Faith, I have often formed a resolution to break the ice, and rattle
away at any rate. But I don't know how, a single glance from a pair of
fine eyes has totally overset my resolution. An impudent fellow may
counterfeit modesty; but I'll be hanged if a modest man can ever
counterfeit impudence.

HASTINGS. If you could but say half the fine things to them that I
have heard you lavish upon the bar-maid of an inn, or even a college
bed-maker----

MARLOW. Why, George, I can't say fine things to them; they freeze,
they petrify me. They may talk of a comet, or a burning mountain, or
some such bagatelle; but, to me, a modest woman, drest out in all her
finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.

HASTINGS. Ha! ha! ha! At this rate, man, how can you ever expect to
marry?

MARLOW. Never; unless, as among kings and princes, my bride were to be
courted by proxy. If, indeed, like an Eastern bridegroom, one were to
be introduced to a wife he never saw before, it might be endured. But
to go through all the terrors of a formal courtship, together with the
episode of aunts, grandmothers, and cousins, and at last to blurt out
the broad staring question of, Madam, will you marry me? No, no,
that's a strain much above me, I assure you.

HASTINGS. I pity you. But how do you intend behaving to the lady you
are come down to v