When we take this circumstance into consideration, with other facts mentioned in the letter, and regard also the nonsensical character of the phraseology employed, we shall be the better enabled to appreciate the extreme difficulty of the puzzle. Dear Sir, It gives me pleasure to state that the reading by Mr. Poe of the cryptograph which I gave you a few days since for transmission to him is correct. I am the more astonished at this, since for various words of two, three and four letters, a distinct character was used for each in order to prevent the discovery of some of those words, by their frequent repetition in a cryptograph of any length and applying them to other words. I also used a distinct character for the terminations tion and sion , and substituted in every word where it was possible, some of the characters above alluded to. Where the same word of two of those letters occurred frequently, the letters of the key phrase and the characters were alternately used, to increase the difficulty.
C HAS .