| A | — | G |
| B | — | 5 |
| C | — | R |
and so on through it all. Then, if they wanted to write the word ‘Cab,’ it would read ‘Rg5’ in the agony column, and who, they wonder, that has not a copy of their key, can find this out, or know that they have chosen a ‘g’ to stand for an ‘a,’ a ‘5’ for a ‘b,’ an ‘r’ for a ‘c,’ and so forth.
But simple ciphers, when one letter or figure is substituted for another, are very easily read. If I saw the following, for instance: ‘2ssx 2s 5! 2??tnpo7x gn?ts 2! W?wwsx6,’ as soon as I glanced my eye over it I should be struck with the triple recurrence of double letters. Thus, in the first word, there are double S’s, in the fourth double marks of interrogation, and in the seventh double W’s.
Then I would ask the question of myself, ‘What are the letters most commonly doubled in the English language?’ They are the vowels e and o at the beginning of words; the consonants p, r, l, m, n, in the middle of words; and the letter s or l at the end. The double letters in the word 2ssx I guess as ‘E’s.’ Well, a consonant would come before them, and what one more natural than ‘m.’ ‘Mee,’ and the ‘x’ must be ‘t.’ ‘Meet me;’ and after a little more thinking, puzzling, and conjecture, we would make out the cipher as ‘Meet me by moonlight alone, my poppets.’ Of course this would not be all the cipher; there would very likely be several words more, and this would make it all the less difficult to read.
Now take a further illustration, that presented by the ‘Language of the Restless Fays,’ as published some years ago:—
Here you have two very well-known verses written in the language of the Restless Fays. It is exactly the same as English, excepting in the forms of its letters. The Fays have twenty-six distinct positions, one for each letter of the alphabet. Now, who can read these verses? The first letter is an ‘L.’
Glancing over the verses, we find two of the same Fay that ends the first word standing together in the second word of the sixth line, and next to the first letter; they must, therefore, we think, be ‘O’s’ or ‘E’s,’ but ‘O’s’ do not often end words, so they must be ‘E’s.’ Down with them as ‘E’s.’ Our first word would now have got as far as this, ‘L . . . l e,’ the dots representing the letters still to be supplied; the second letter must be a vowel, and the double ones, therefore, consonants. Now run over the alphabet in your own mind, and see what two consonants are most likely to make sense before the finals l e. Why two ‘T’s’ would, and an ‘I’ before that completes the word ‘Little.’
Now we have four known letters to begin the battle, so we go over every line and top the Fays wherever we find them representing ‘L’s,’ ‘I’s,’ ‘T’s,’ or ‘E’s.’ But the second words of the third, the fourth, and the eighth lines are precisely the same. They are words of three letters, and they end in the Fay we call ‘E.’ Now what is the commonest word of three letters in our language ending in ‘E’? Why ‘the,’ to be sure. These little words must be ‘the’s,’ so we mark them so, and this gives us another letter, namely, ‘H.’ Then we mark all our ‘H’s’—they are but few—and go on again rejoicing; and presently our eagle eye is riveted on the first word of the fourth line represented by three Fays, one kneeling like a volunteer, the other standing on his head, and the last touching his left toe, and we are not slow to notice that the last word in the same line ends with those three foolish Fays, preceded by an ‘L.’ So the second letter of that word must be a vowel, and it is neither ‘E’ nor ‘I.’ So it must be ‘O’ or ‘A.’ But the word ‘and’—a very common one—would with an ‘L’ prefixing it make the word ‘Land.’ Hurrah! we have it then. The first word of the line is ‘and’; the last is ‘land.’ And we hasten to put down all the ‘N’s’ and ‘A’s’ and ‘D’s’ in the verses over the heads of the representative Fays as before.
Glancing over the lines we find we have got nearly all the last word in the fifth line except the first and the two last letters, thus:—. I N D N E. . The two last are the same, two mad little Fays, running apparently for their dear little lives. Now ‘L’s’ and ‘S’s’ are both common as double terminal letters; but here the S’s make sense, and the L’s would not. The word of course is kindness.