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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through 15-18.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How did Gene the magistrate handle an overzealous Methodist clergyman?
(a) Gene ruled that the clergyman was within his rights to practice in the Jewish ghetto.
(b) Gene had policemen follow the clergyman wherever he went.
(c) Gene created trumped-up charges to render him no longer a problem.
(d) Gene ruled that religion was essential to the functioning of a democracy.

2. According to the editor, why were the 1930s Mencken's "downfall"?
(a) President FDR waged a battle of personal attacks against Mencken.
(b) Mencken's severe illness limited his output.
(c) Mencken spent most of the decade in Europe.
(d) The hardships in the country changed popular sentiment.

3. What was the "last straw" that forced Mencken to quit the organization in #16?
(a) The fact that the running track was rectangular.
(b) An evangelical teen in the reading room.
(c) The relentless shouting of his gym teacher.
(d) A painful accident with the horizontal bar.

4. Which decade, according to the author, was Mencken at his best?
(a) The 1920s.
(b) The 1940s.
(c) The 1910s.
(d) The 1930s.

5. According to "The Incomparable Buzz-Saw," what is a woman's only power?
(a) The power over her children.
(b) The power to torture a man through love.
(c) The power to ruin a man's life with divorce.
(d) The power of a house's pursestrings.

Short Answer Questions

1. What did Gene the magistrate do with respect to an old man in his court accused of wife beating?

2. What organization did Mencken's father force him to join at age fourteen?

3. What moral choice faced Mencken and a cop on New Year's Day, in "Recollections of Notable Cops"?

4. Which is NOT a reason Mencken gives for admiring Theodore Dreiser?

5. Why shouldn't men trust other men?

(see the answer key)

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