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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 19, Science, Chapter 20, Quackery.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is NOT one of the qualities of being a teacher according to Mencken?
(a) Being underpaid.
(b) Being able to breeze through lessons and cut corners.
(c) Wearing oneself out to achieve the impossible.
(d) Having no respect.

2. How does Mencken react to a religious ceremony inside a basilica, as he recounts in Chapter 15?
(a) With indifference.
(b) With disgust.
(c) With joy.
(d) With intellectual curiosity.

3. What aspect of President Grant does Mencken admire?
(a) His reputation for a clean, corruption-free administration.
(b) His military prowess.
(c) His oratorical prowess.
(d) His hard-living, genuine lifestyle.

4. What effect has intermarriage had on the American South?
(a) It has positively blurred the lines between high class and low class.
(b) It has negatively blurred the lines between high class and low class.
(c) It has introduced culture such as art and literature into the American South.
(d) It has infused the American South with the very best qualities of Western Europe.

5. Who does Mencken identify as the founder of Christian Science?
(a) Anthony Comstock.
(b) Sister Aimee.
(c) Theodore Veblen.
(d) Mary Baker G. Eddy.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Mencken feel about the overall capacity for virtue in the human race?

2. In "female novels," how are males portrayed according to Mencken?

3. What subject does Mencken begin his volume with?

4. Before democracy came to be, what did people believe this system of government to be?

5. What is the chief problem with political theorists?

(see the answer key)

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