Taming the Bicycle by Mark Twain The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each lesson, he knows he has acquired something. He also knows what that something is, and likewise, that it will stay with him. It is not like studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring a new verb tense on you, and there you are. No—and I see now, plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is that you can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one difficulty at a time, and learn it—not ease up and move on to the next, leaving that one half learned. When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task—how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the bars with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times. Which three descriptions reflect the purpose of this essay?