The reader is probably aware that there appear occasionally in the "Agony" column of the _Times_ (or in that devoted to "personal" advertisements) certain sentences apparently written in some very strange foreign tongue, but which the better informed are aware are made by transposing letters according to the rules of cryptography or secret writing.

Now it is estimated that there are in Great Britain at least one thousand lovers of occult lore and quaint curiosa, decipherers of rebuses and adorers of anagrams, who, when one of these delightful puzzles appears in the _Times_, set themselves down and know no rest until it is unpuzzled and made clear, being stimulated in the pursuit by the delightful consciousness that they are exploring the path of somebody's secret, which somebody would be very sorry to have made known.
Such an advertisement appeared one day, and a friend of mine, who had a genius for that sort of thing, sat himself down early one Saturday morning to decipher it.
First of all he ascertained which letter occurred most frequently in the advertisement, for this must be the letter _e_ according to rules made and provided by the great Edgar A.Poe, the American poet-cryptographer.
But to reveal the secret in full, I may as well say, dear reader, that you must take printers' type in their cases, _and follow the proportions according to the size of the boxes_.

By doing this you cannot fail to unrip the seam of any of these transmutations.
But, alas! this cock would not fight--it was a dead bird in the pit.

My friend at once apprehended that he had to deal with an old hand--one of those aggravating fellows who are up to cryp--a man who can write a sentence, and be capable of leaving the letter _e_ entirely out.

For there _are_ people who will do this.
So he went to work afresh upon now hypotheses, and pleasantly the hours fled by.