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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 Mencken's opinion of the telephone?
(a) They are unnecessary and harmful.
(b) They are unnecessary, but are fun to play around with.
(c) They are necessary, and have greatly benefited mankind.
(d) They are necessary, but they have caused more harm than good.

2. Who wrote Parsifal?
(a) Strauss.
(b) Schubert.
(c) Beethoven.
(d) Wagner.

3. What does Mencken say about the nature of scientific hypotheses?
(a) He believes they should be lesser in number, and less fanciful.
(b) We need more of them, and they are valuable.
(c) He is highly skeptical of their value.
(d) Hypotheses are almost always wrong, as men are poor at guesswork.

4. What word might Mencken use to characterize Mary Baker G. Eddy?
(a) Fraud.
(b) Saint.
(c) Intellectual.
(d) Necessary.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What is the crux of Mr. Ayres' philosophical argument that Mencken criticizes?

2. In Chapter 23, Mencken attends a church service during the Scopes Monkey Trial. What is his impression of that service?

3. According to Mencken, how will "anyone who appreciates aural beauty" regard opera?

4. Who does Mencken call the most romantic American author of the nineteenth century?

5. What action taken by Anthony Comstock does Mencken take issue with?

Short Essay Questions

1. Summarize Mencken's view of Ludwig van Beethoven.

2. What does Mencken believe about contemporary new inventions? Mention the telephone as well as the thermostat in your response.

3. Summarize Mencken's views on Mark Twain.

4. Summarize Mencken's account of the Scopes Monkey Trial and his impression of the town of Dayton, Tennessee.

5. What does Mencken feel is the contemporary state of psychology? How does he feel about Freudianism?

6. What does Mencken believe about chiropractors?

7. How does Mencken compare socialism to capitalism? Include the Bolshevik Revolution in your response.

8. What is Mencken's opinion of the music of Johann Strauss? Why wasn't Strauss' music more well-received in America?

9. What opinion does Mencken render about a) Mary Baker G. Eddy and Christian Science, and b) the doctrine of theosophy?

10. What is Mencken's own philosophy of psychology? What does he feel forms the basis of human psychology?

(see the answer keys)

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