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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through 35-39.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What is a man's usual response to beauty?
(a) Highly-violent behavior.
(b) Lust.
(c) Romantic affection.
(d) Indifference.

2. Which is NOT a reason Mencken gives for admiring Theodore Dreiser?
(a) Dreiser's unique place in the world of literature.
(b) Dreiser's unchanging subject matter and style.
(c) The ability for Dreiser to touch a reader on an emotional level.
(d) Dreiser's insistence on describing every detail of a scene.

3. Which of the following was NOT a name applied to William Jennings Bryan by Mencken?
(a) Fly-catcher.
(b) Yellow-bellied sapsucker.
(c) Charlatan.
(d) Mountebank.

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

5. What did Mencken feel about "American thinking"?
(a) It is full of awesome promise.
(b) It is cautious, yet optimistic.
(c) It is timid and superficial.
(d) It is bold and visionary.

Short Answer Questions

1. How was Theodore Dreiser like Joseph Conrad, according to Mencken?

2. How was Mencken able to get a taxi driver to drive him to a speakeasy in Pennsylvania?

3. Which is one of the stated reasons the editor put the volume together?

4. In "Travail," how did the boys going to school in the morning seem to Mencken?

5. Who was the president of Cuba when Mencken visited the country in "Gore in the Caribees"?

(see the answer key)

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