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This quiz consists of 5 multiple choice and 5 short answer questions through Chapter 23, Souvenirs of a Journalist, Chapter 24, Criticism.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. In the boxing match Mencken reports on in Chapter 23, why do most want the favorite boxer to lose?
(a) He was drunk and hollering at the crowd.
(b) He had been accused of taking steroids.
(c) He had evaded service in World War I.
(d) He had beaten his wife up the night before.

2. What do most women think of their husbands according to Mencken?
(a) Women fear and loathe their husbands.
(b) Women are indifferent to their husbands and use them as mere tools.
(c) Women love and respect their husbands.
(d) Women pity their husbands and consider them asses.

3. How do rich people "buy public esteem" according to Mencken?
(a) They buy newspaper ads praising themselves.
(b) They make generous contributions to political campaigns.
(c) They donate to charities and to the arts.
(d) They are especially generous to panhandlers.

4. Why does Mencken believe life on other planets is highly unlikely?
(a) Temperatures elsewhere than earth cannot sustain life.
(b) There is a lack of carbon on most planets.
(c) God only created life on Earth.
(d) There is too much methane on most planets.

5. What kind of sense of right and wrong do children have?
(a) Children are born without a sense of right and wrong, and society imposes this sense upon them.
(b) Children are born with a sense of right and wrong, and they carry this into adulthood.
(c) Children are born with a sense of right and wrong, which is then corrupted by society.
(d) Children are born without a sense of right and wrong, but they develop it without society's interference.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was "unusual" about Mr. Gray?

2. What does Mencken believe about the universality of morality?

3. Who was the attorney on the side of the prosecution in the Scopes Monkey Trial?

4. What is the consequence of someone believing in God, according to Mencken in Chapter 1?

5. Which is NOT one of the features Mencken imagines for the Confederacy, had it survived the Civil War?

(see the answer key)

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