In "Advice to Young Men", Mencken jokes that a fifty-year-old man is as easy as a Yale sophomore.

In "Advice to Young Men", Mencken jokes that a fifty-year-old man is as easy as a Yale sophomore.

• A. False
• B. True
• C. Not mentioned
• D. Irrelevant

Answer: (B)

Satire and irony are at work here. In Advice to Young Men, Mencken teases the idea that aging automatically brings maturity or control by joking that a fifty-year-old man is as easy as a Yale sophomore. The humor comes from the unexpected comparison: a middle-aged man, who should be the steadier, more formidable figure, is likened to a college sophomore—someone presumed to be naive or easily swayed. That contrast exposes Mencken’s skeptical stance toward social myths about age, maturity, and social success, using the line to poke fun at the assumption that growing older necessarily makes a person more formidable. Since this joke appears in the text, the statement is accurate.

Satire and irony are at work here. In Advice to Young Men, Mencken teases the idea that aging automatically brings maturity or control by joking that a fifty-year-old man is as easy as a Yale sophomore. The humor comes from the unexpected comparison: a middle-aged man, who should be the steadier, more formidable figure, is likened to a college sophomore—someone presumed to be naive or easily swayed. That contrast exposes Mencken’s skeptical stance toward social myths about age, maturity, and social success, using the line to poke fun at the assumption that growing older necessarily makes a person more formidable. Since this joke appears in the text, the statement is accurate.