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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Tom Crick mentions a similarity his father found between his home and the battlefields of World War I. What is that similarity?
(a) The men were silent and preferred to keep to themselves.
(b) The mud felt the same and eels swam in the pools.
(c) The army served the same ale the Atkinsons brewed in Gildsey.
(d) The pretty girls in the town were disdainful of him.

2. Whom does Tom Crick quote as saying, "we cannot step into the same river twice?"
(a) Heraclitus of Ephesus.
(b) Cicero.
(c) Dionysius the Areopagite.
(d) Socrates.

3. What does Tom notice for the first time when Mary struggles with Freddie Parr's prank?
(a) That Freddie Parr is a drunkard.
(b) That Terry Coe is afraid of eels.
(c) That Mary is ticklish.
(d) That Dick is interested in Mary and that Mary is interested in Dick.

4. What sort of proof does Mary offer that Dick cannot be the father of her child?
(a) Psychological.
(b) Physiological.
(c) Theological.
(d) Ideological.

5. What is one of the books Tom Crick reads that he finds in the trove of books collected by his great-aunts Louisa and Dora?
(a) Hereward the Wake.
(b) King Arthur and His Noble Knights.
(c) The Last of the Mohicans.
(d) A Tale of Two Cities.

6. Why does Tom Crick decide to study the history of the Fens?
(a) Because it is the only history that holds any fascination for him.
(b) To avoid thinking about the history that is in the making as World War II rages.
(c) Because the only history books he can find during the Battle for Britain are local ones.
(d) Because the only scholarship to university he can get is for Fenland history.

7. Who says, "explaining's a way of avoiding the facts while you pretend to get near to them?"
(a) Tom Crick.
(b) Price.
(c) Mary Crick.
(d) Lewis Scott.

8. Lewis Scott, the headmaster at the school where Tom Crick teaches, thinks history should be considered part of what other field?
(a) General Studies.
(b) Geography.
(c) Civics.
(d) Liberal Arts.

9. What is it that Tom decides he must find at all cost?
(a) A key to his mother's chest in the attic.
(b) A full bottle of Coronation Ale.
(c) A way to expose Dick as Freddie's murderer.
(d) His grandfather's diary.

10. What mesmerized King Canute as he was rowed past Ely?
(a) The singing of the swans in the fens.
(b) The chanting of the monks at the Ely monastery.
(c) The sound of the sea breeze as it rushed through the reeds.
(d) The beauty of the girls washing laundry near the riverbank.

11. What does Freddie Parr do to Mary as revenge for setting him up to lose the competition because she knew he couldn't swim?
(a) He rolls her in wet mud until she is totally covered by it.
(b) He slips a large eel into her knickers.
(c) He steals all her clothes and forces her to walk home naked.
(d) He holds her under water until she nearly drowns.

12. What is the great mystery about the eel that nobody has been able to explain?
(a) How eels can live both in salt water and fresh water.
(b) What family of species the eel really belongs to.
(c) How long eels have existed.
(d) Where and how eels mate.

13. What does Tom compare his father to as every day he sees him trudge back and forth along the canal?
(a) A chained falcon.
(b) A tethered dog.
(c) A blind ox.
(d) A caged wolf.

14. Who does Tom Crick think his wife Mary is having a love affair with in her old age?
(a) Their neighbor's son George.
(b) God.
(c) Nature.
(d) His brother Dick.

15. What does Ernest Atkinson, Tom's grandfather, do that marks the beginning of a long list of scandalous behavior?
(a) He bathes in a public fountain with some of his Cambridge classmates.
(b) He closes the Atkinson brewery and begins selling soda instead.
(c) He proclaims that he believes Sarah Atkinson's ghost haunts his bedroom.
(d) He get engaged to a poor journalist's daughter without his parents' permission.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does his most outspoken student reject Tom Crick's attempt to teach the class history?

2. Where do the Cricks find the body of Freddie Parr?

3. What did Johannes Schmidt conclude about the difference between the European eel and the American eel?

4. What is the worst thing Tom Crick can imagine?

5. What does Tom Crick mean by the term "Natural History"?

(see the answer keys)

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