the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I
constructed a table, thus:


Of the character 8 there are 33
; " 26
4 " 19
$) " 16
* " 13
5 " 12
6 " 11
+1 " 8
0 " 6
92 " 5
:3 " 4
? " 3
¶ " 2
]--. " 1


"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.
Afterwards the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w
b k p q x z. E_ predominates, however, so remarkably that an individual
sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing
character.

"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for
something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of
the table is obvious--but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very
partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will