it is easy to write and not very hard to read the entire speech. The whole theory of the cryptogram is that each correspondent possesses the key to the secret. To confound an outside inquirer the key is often varied. A good plan is to take a line from any ordinary book and substitute the first twenty-six of its letters for those of the alphabet. In your next cryptogram you take the letters from another page or another book. It is not necessary to give an example. Enough will be seen from what we have written to instruct an intelligent inquirer.
58. Decapitations and Curtailments
are riddles somewhat of the nature of the Logogriph, which
. In the first, the omission of the successive initials produces new words, as—Prelate, Relate, Elate, Late, Ate. In the curtailment the last letter of the word is taken away with a similar result, as—Patent, Paten, Pate, Pat, Pa. Of like kind are the riddles known as variations, mutilations, reverses, and counterchanges. A good example of the last-named is this:
Charge, Chester, Charge: on, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.
Had I but been in Stanley's place,
When Marmion urged him to the chase,
A tear might come on every face."
The answer is onion—On, I, on.
Mock Not a Cobbler for His Black Thumb.