Further, there are many awkwardnesses of expression which proper training or subsequent practice can eliminate; and in proportion as a writer attains the faculty of instinctively avoiding these, his technique improves. Perfected, he would never use them, and his sentences would flow untaught from his pen in absolutely clear reflection of his thought. As an example of what I mean by awkwardnesses, I would cite the use of "whose" as the possessive of "which." I know that adequate authority pronounces this correct, so it is not on that score I reject it. Moreover, I recognize that in myself the repulsion is somewhat of an acquired taste. When I began to write I thus employed it myself, but its sound is so inevitably suggestive of "who" as to constitute an impertinence of association. I have lately been reading a very excellent history of the United States, in which the frequent repetition of "whose" in this sense causes me the sensation of perpetually "stubbing" my toe; an Americanism, which, I will explain to any British reader, means stumbling over roots or on an unequal pavement, the irritation of which needs not exposition. In the matter of natural style I soon discovered that the besetting anxiety of my soul was to be exact and lucid. I might not succeed, but my wish was indisputable. To be accurate in facts and correct in conclusions, both as to appreciation and expression, dominated all other motives. This had a weak side. I was nervously susceptible to being convicted of a mistake; it upset me, as they say. Even where a man writes, this is a defect of a quality; in active life it entails slowness of decision and procrastination, failure "to get there." I have no doubt that much contemporary writing suffers delay from a like morbid dread as to possibility of error. The aim to be thus both accurate and clear often encumbered my sentences. My cautious mind strove to introduce between the same two periods every qualification, whether in abatement or enforcement of the leading idea or statement. This in many cases meant an accumulation of clauses, over which I exercised my ingenuity and lavished my time so to arrange them that the whole should be at once apprehended by the reader. It was not enough for me that the qualifications should appear a page or two before, or after, and in this I think myself right; but in wanting them all in the same period, as I instinctively did,--and do, for nature is obstinate,--I have imposed on myself needless labor, and have often taxed attention as an author has no right to do. Unless under pressing necessity, I myself will not be at pains to read what I can with difficulty understand.