cypher, the first thing I perceived was that, in order to read the
secret, the heart-shaped figure must be left out of consideration, if
there was any _consistency_ in the system of cyphers at all, for it
belonged to a class of symbols quite distinct from that of all the
others, not being, like them, a picture-letter. Omitting this,
therefore, and taking all the other vowels and consonants whether
actually represented in the device or not, I now got the proverb in the
form _mens sana in ... pore sano._ I wrote this down, and what
instantly struck me was the immense, the altogether unusual, number of
_liquids_ in the motto--six in all, amounting to no less than one-third
of the total number of letters! Putting these all together you get
_mnnnnr_, and you can see that the very appearance of the "m's" and
"n's" (especially when _written_) running into one another, of itself
suggests a stream of water. Having previously arrived at the conclusion
of London as the meeting-place, I could not now fail to go on to the
inference of _the Thames_; there, or near there, would I find those
whom I sought. The letters "mnnnnr," then, meant the Thames: what did
the still remaining letters mean? I now took these remaining letters,
placing them side by side: I got aaa, sss, ee, oo, p and i. Juxtaposing
these nearly in the order indicated by the frequency of their
occurrence, and their place in the Roman alphabet, you at once and
inevitably get the word _Aesopi._ And now I was fairly startled by this
symmetrical proof of the exactness of my own deductions in other
respects, but, above all, far above all, by the occurrence of that word
_"Aesopi."_ For who was Aesopus? He was a slave who was freed for his
wise and witful sallies: he is therefore typical of the liberty of the
wise--their moral manumission from temporary and narrow law; he was
also a close friend of Croesus: he is typical, then, of the union of
wisdom with wealth--true wisdom with real wealth; lastly, and above
all, he was thrown by the Delphians from a rock on account of his wit: