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Various

"Short-Stories"

We have thus this arrangement:
the tree ;4 (‡?34 the,
or, substituting the natural letters, whereknown, it reads thus:
the tree thr‡?3h the.
"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces,
or substitute dots, we read thus:
the tree thr...h the,
when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But the
discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by
‡ ? and 3.
"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known,
characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this
arrangement.
83(88, or, egree,
which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree' and gives us
another letter, _d_, represented by †.
"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination.
;46(;88*.
"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by
dots, as before, we read thus:
th.rtee,
an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and
again furnishing us with two new characters, _i_, and _n_, represented
by 6 and *.
"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the
combination,
53 ‡‡†.
"Translating, as before, we obtain
.good,
which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two
words are 'A good.'
"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as
discovered, in a tabular form.


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