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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. According to Mencken, the intellectual tradition of Whitman and Emerson had been transferred to which man?
(a) Van Wyck Brooks.
(b) William Jennings Bryan.
(c) Theodore Dreiser.
(d) Jose Miguel Gomez.

2. What famous speech did Ralph Waldo Emerson deliver in 1837?
(a) The Awfulness of War.
(b) The Pride of European Intellectualism.
(c) The American Scholar.
(d) The Merits of Monogamy.

3. What did Mencken satirize in "Quid Est Veritas"?
(a) Organized religion.
(b) Country doctors.
(c) Aristocrats.
(d) Those who insisted Latin was not a dead language.

4. According to Mencken, what kind of books did Theodore Dreiser produce?
(a) Books more important as museum pieces than texts that should be read.
(b) Wheezing, moralizing diatribes.
(c) Breezy, summer-day reading.
(d) Weighty, substantial tomes that one must concentrate on for a long time.

5. What does Mencken state about the literary influence(s) of Theodore Dreiser?
(a) Dreiser was the product of Emile Zola.
(b) Dreiser draws upon the literary tradition of Germany.
(c) No one author can be pointed to as an influence.
(d) Dreiser was the product of Frank Norris.

Short Answer Questions

1. Which is NOT a reason Mencken gives for admiring Theodore Dreiser?

2. Why do the majority of people lie, according to Mencken?

3. In "Pater Patriae," which was NOT one of the reasons Mencken admired George Washington?

4. Who presided over the Republican Convention of 1920?

5. What did Mencken wonder about Henry Cabot Lodge?

Short Essay Questions

1. What criticisms did Mencken have for Theodore Dreiser?

2. According to Mencken, why would a Christian man not cheat on his wife, according to "The Libertine"?

3. In "Gore in the Caribees," what becames of the rebel leader, Jose Miguel Gomez?

4. How must men react to a woman's allure?

5. What was Gene the magistrate's approach to law and justice in "Recollections of Notable Cops"?

6. What circumstances drove Mencken away from attending the Y. M. C. A.?

7. What is democracy's aim, in "A Blind Spot"? What is a crime in the eyes of democracy?

8. What was the chief problem of a Baltimore summer, according to Mencken in "The Baltimore of the Eighties"?

9. According to Mencken, why do so many people lie?

10. How did Mencken answer the question of whether successful men should have mistresses?

(see the answer keys)

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