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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is the subject of Chapter 7?
(a) Death.
(b) Quackery.
(c) Classical composers.
(d) Taxes.

2. What is the purpose of monogamy, according to Mencken?
(a) Marriage serves to enhance and legitimize passion.
(b) Marriage serves to protect society from itself.
(c) Marriage serves to emphasize romantic love.
(d) Marriage serves to kill and restrain passion.

3. Before democracy came to be, what did people believe this system of government to be?
(a) It was such a foreign concept, no one could really imagine it.
(b) A heavenly form of government.
(c) They believed democracy was just another form of dictatorship.
(d) A wretched form of government that should not come to pass.

4. What kind of men has history been written by, to date?
(a) Third-rate, inferior men.
(b) Men more interested in power than factual accuracy.
(c) Noble men of purpose.
(d) The most intelligent men, and this is why history cannot be understood by most.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the "metaphysical" type of person inevitably do?

2. Which politician does Mencken refer to as "a good man in a bad trade"?

3. Mencken compares Theodore Roosevelt's political ideas to which other politician's?

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

5. In Chapter 7, Mencken notes that there are too few books written about what subject?

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Mencken have to say about politicians? What kind of people are they? How do they operate?

2. In Chapter 1, how does Mencken's view of humanity coincide with that of the modern scientist?

3. What does Mencken see as a popular misconception about death? What is his opinion of suicide?

4. Describe Mencken's conception of the Anglo-Saxon American. What are this person's flaws?

5. What is the average person's opinion of government, according to Mencken?

6. Summarize Mencken's appraisal of Abraham Lincoln.

7. What is the origin of morality according to Mencken?

8. Who is Professor Thorstein Veblen, and what is Mencken's opinion of him and his work?

9. What is Mencken's opinion of the contemporary American South? What are its features? What rules the South?

10. What effect did the Civil War have on the American South, and why was this conflict so disastrous to Mencken from a cultural standpoint?

(see the answer keys)

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