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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. In Chapter 7, Mencken notes that there are too few books written about what subject?
(a) True crime.
(b) Taxes.
(c) Death.
(d) Women.

3. What subject does Mencken begin his volume with?
(a) The automobile.
(b) The mysteries of women.
(c) The horrors of the carnival.
(d) The nature of man.

4. Why is the "pretty man" hated?
(a) Women are jealous of pretty men.
(b) The pretty man reminds us of all of our own faults.
(c) Women care less for beauty than men do.
(d) The pretty man is almost universally also very dumb.

5. What or who rules the American South?
(a) An aristocratic class.
(b) A love for automobiles and technology.
(c) Baptist and Methodist "barbarism".
(d) Secular liberals.

6. Which is NOT one of the qualities of Anglo-Saxons Mencken points to in Chapter 10?
(a) Rational and free of superstition.
(b) Pure blooded.
(c) Yearning to constantly improve.
(d) Self-congratulatory.

7. What period in history does Mencken refer to as "New Deal No. 1"?
(a) North Africa in the 1900s.
(b) Britain in the 1910s.
(c) America in the 1770s.
(d) France in the 1840s.

8. How does Mencken characterize a woman's level of civility?
(a) Women are relatively uncivilized.
(b) Women are much more civilized than men.
(c) Women have created their own civilization quite distinct from men.
(d) Women do not submit to civilization and must be coerced.

9. What is Man's one unique characteristic, per Chapter 1?
(a) Imagination.
(b) Optimism.
(c) Romantic feeling.
(d) The ability to betray.

10. What is Mencken's opinion of original Christians?
(a) The historical record is so poor that Mencken cannot form an opinion.
(b) They were patriots, akin to the Founding Fathers.
(c) They were vulgar cads without imagination.
(d) They were "men's men" and should be looked upon as examples.

11. At what event did Mencken first personally encounter William Jennings Bryan?
(a) The 1912 Democratic National Convention.
(b) The Scopes Monkey trial.
(c) Bryan's congressional trial for corruption.
(d) The funeral of Grover Cleveland.

12. What "call" does Mencken make to America's poets in Chapter 7?
(a) He wishes them to speak upon the beauty of the female figure.
(b) He wishes them to write a funeral service for the damned.
(c) He wishes them to burn all of their poems and drown themselves.
(d) He wishes them to rewrite Ode to a Grecian Urn.

13. Why does Mencken admire John D. Rockefeller?
(a) For his business prowess.
(b) For his political acumen.
(c) For his larger-than-life lifestyle.
(d) For his research foundations.

14. What is Mencken's belief about morality?
(a) Morality is necessary.
(b) Morality is a made-up concept that doesn't exist.
(c) Morality is reserved only for the aristocracy.
(d) Morality is unnecessary.

15. How does Mencken describe Oliver Wendell Holmes?
(a) He was a tool of liberal elites.
(b) He was a completely inept United States Senator.
(c) He was a brilliant reasoner.
(d) He was a tool of conservative fuddy-duddies.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which is NOT one of the qualities Mencken ascribes to William Jennings Bryan?

2. What do most women think of their husbands according to Mencken?

3. How has Mencken organized his book?

4. Why did England experience particular difficulties in World War I according to Mencken?

5. What is Mencken's belief about crime?

(see the answer keys)

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