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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What causes the soldiers at the 1915 Royal Cambrideshire Militia parade to stumble out of formation?
(a) Heckling by Ernest Atkinson.
(b) Drinking Coronation Ale.
(c) The sound of a beer barge foghorn.
(d) Helen Atkinson's beauty.

2. What does Tom compare the sound of Dick's motorcycle to the evening Mary has broken up with Tom?
(a) A bomber airplane.
(b) The thudding of his own heart.
(c) Machine gun fire.
(d) The growling of an angry beast.

3. Who hunted in Greenwich Park, where Tom and Mary sit in the evenings with their dog?
(a) Queen Anne.
(b) King Henry VIII.
(c) Sir Walter Raleigh.
(d) The Duke of Wellington.

4. What does Ernest Atkinson convert his manor Kessling Hall into?
(a) An asylum for the mentally ill.
(b) A hospital for the wounded of World War I.
(c) A museum in honor of Sarah Atkinson.
(d) A school for orphans.

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

6. How does Freddie Parr's father Jack react to the ruling by the court that Freddie's death was an accident?
(a) He walks out of the court room and is never seen again.
(b) He has a heart attack in the court room and dies on the spot.
(c) He goes to sit on the train tracks to commit suicide, but no train appears.
(d) He curses the judge and accuses Tom Crick of killing Freddie.

7. Tom confronts Price about his frequent interruptions during class. What question does Price's reluctance about history boil down to?
(a) How can anyone know what really happened?
(b) Is history not just a collection of stories that keeps the powerful in power?
(c) How many more history lessons will he have to sit through?
(d) Does knowing history help change anything?

8. Which of the following is NOT a theory that biologists have put forward about how eels reproduce?
(a) Eels create offspring by rubbing against rocks; the young form the shreds of skin that come off.
(b) Eels fertilize their eggs internally and bring forth live young.
(c) Eels form out of small parasites that begin their lives in the belly of larger fish.
(d) Eels are sexless and a born spontaneously out of the mud.

9. What does Ernest Atkinson do that marks the first step in his family's economic decline?
(a) He takes a ruinous Grand Tour of Europe.
(b) He sells the Water Transport Company.
(c) He closes the Atkinson brewery.
(d) He sells Kessling Hall, their estate.

10. 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 slips a large eel into her knickers.
(b) He holds her under water until she nearly drowns.
(c) He steals all her clothes and forces her to walk home naked.
(d) He rolls her in wet mud until she is totally covered by it.

11. Johannes Schmidt, whose theory about eels and their mating habits is considered the most accurate one, thought that eels mate where?
(a) In river springs.
(b) The Gulf of Mexico.
(c) The Sargasso Sea.
(d) The Arctic Ocean.

12. What is the main fish that the Cricks and their neighbors catch for food?
(a) Trout.
(b) Carp.
(c) Eel.
(d) Salmon.

13. Which one of the following is NOT one of the ghosts that is said to haunt the marches along the River Leem?
(a) The Singing Swans of Wash Fen Mere.
(b) The Headless Ferryman of Staithe.
(c) The Monk of Sudchurch.
(d) The Grim Hound of Gargoyle Hall.

14. What was Freddie Parr's father, Jack Parr, infamous for in the Gildsey area?
(a) His heckling of young women who worked in the fields.
(b) His tendency to get into fights with the local barman.
(c) His habit of stealing livestock off the river barges.
(d) His ability to smuggle liquor out of an American military base nearby.

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

Short Answer Questions

1. What about Mary strikes Tom when he returns from Germany at the end of World War II to marry her?

2. To what does Tom Crick compare the soil of the Fens?

3. What about the scene at the Lode does NOT remind Tom of the later scene of Freddie Parr's death?

4. What tells Tom that he and Mary must finish their argument quickly because the park is about to close?

5. What is NOT one of the names the Atkinsons give their special-occasion ales?

(see the answer keys)

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