Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1866-04-26


| quirer; "you see the Importance of my
knowing the meaning Of this advertisement
/ as earlyes possible; when can you let me
have the translation
"Pu do all / cam" I replied; will you
| look in at noon tomorrow? l shall have 1t
for you by then, most likely, if can de-
cipher it at all.
AT this moment the door opened, and my
wife entered, dressed for the theatre.
Waitzen bowed to her, and then glancing
with evident anxiety at my dress-coat, whis-
pered {. You will surely begin at once
You are not going out? Only think Of the
little time you will have !"
81 really must go,' l said. GO shall
leave the theatre after the first piece, and
| shall have plenty Of time; besides, shall
! look over it at the theatre"
He implored me to remain at home, and
to begin work at once; but was quite deaf
| to his entreaties, and, taking my wife's arm
in mine. went down stairs. At the theatre,
remarked. some half-hour after our arrival,
a face which seemed always turned towards
us. except that, when | looked in its direc-
ton, it became averted. After noticing this
for two or three times, discovered that the
face was the face of Chr. WaitZen, who had
come to the theatre in disguise, to. see, ap-
parently, whether carried out my promise
| If looking over the cipher in my box. 10
punish him for his distrus' kept my eyes
| on the performance the whole time.
On our return home, l babe my wife
good nj BIT, explaining that l was going to
| sit up to work It's all very well to preach
g early to bed and early to rises" but II
| you have any head-work to do, there's no
time like that between p IN. and q. m :,
when all your household is asleep. Every
thing is quiet; even the street noises, unless
you live in populous and late quarter, are
hushed, and, above all, you are safe from
| interruption. AS you sit in the genial
warmth of fire, with the light OF your
! lamp concentrated on your papers or books,
| you hear, perhaps now and then, passing
| cab coming home from the theatre, or, later,
the cry of some roisterer, singing the vulgar
music hall melody that he heard an hour
ago, when a little less drunk than now;
YOU catch the tread of the solitary police
man, and notice that he tries your door as
he passes; but all these sounds are moment
ary, and do bot serve to intensity the quiet.
Mind and body are nicely balanced; body
has had its proper allowance OF exercise,
but not yet tired, consents to let mind be at
peace. But the morning At what hour
can you rise when you will not be disturbed
by noises? You are hungry; ten months
| out of the twelve you are cold, Tor you are
/ without fire; and the other months 1t is so
! fine, that every body wants to be abroad IN
the bright, smokeless day. No! If you want
! to do work set up late.
1t was what, at all events, made up my
mind to do, so, after stirring the fire, sat
down to look at the mysterious scrap OF
paper left nae by Waitzen. My first step
was to get some inkling of the nature OF the
cipher, Of the plan on which it proceeded
Exclusive of the word at the head, | found
that tt specimen | had, consisted OF 252
figures, divided by brackets into 55 groups,
a dot in every case, again separating the
| figures within each bracket into two parts.
The number of figures enclosed in each
bracket varied from up to 5; the proper
tons in which the various combinations
were found differing widely, there being
only two instances of groups Of figures
each z. of each; IL, of 4 each and SO,
or more than three ffth5 Of the whole num-
Der, of 5 each. Now, the object of these
brackets and dots might quite possibly be
merely to increase the difficulty of reading
the CIPHER it was, however, equally pos
sible that they were there to serve their
ostenslble purpose, the division and subdi-
vision of the figures. Carefully guarding
against absolutely assuming the correctness
of this latter view, | sought in the cipher
itself for something to lead me to its adop-
ton or rejection. / found that the charaet-
/ ers used were the numerals from 0 to 9. l
| looked at this so" little more closely,
| and found that it occurred 10 times. Now,
had the division ard subdivision of the
figures been arbitrary merely, it would re-
quire no proof to show that it should have
occurred once, at the very least, at the be-
ginning of a group 1t did not so occur.
The first step was gained; the division was
a necessary part of the cipher.
The fact had remarked led me on an
other step. Had the plan Of the cipher
been to represent certain letters by certain
figures, should have been entitled to ex-
pect the so" at the head of group; since,
in English, the language in which the cipher
was probably written, there is no letter of
frequent occurrence which is not also an
initial letter, rule which holds good in all
the European languages with which l am
acquainted.
should have been already almost justi-
fed in concluding that the meaning OF the
cipher depended ON the grouping, but
found other proofs, which at the same time
led me still further on. have already re-
marked the frequency of groups of figures.
Now, this singular predominance of groups
Of b figures would scarcely harmonic with
any plan which represented letters by single
arbitrary signs, although it would no doubt
be possible to compose sentences consisting
chiefly of words of 5 letters, retaining or
rejecting the vowels. But in the great ma
jority of cases of 5 figures, found figures
before the debt. To these figures before the
dots, |, for the moment. restricted my atten-
ton, | found that taking all the groups)
they ranged, with intervals, from to 268
in 81 eases ont of the %, there were three
figures. Discarding repetrions, | found
that under 100 there were Is; between 100
and 200, Is; and from 200 to the end, Is
a degree of uniformity higher than | had
expected to find, and high enough to esia-
blisb that it was the result of the grouping
being dependent on plan.
| had thus determined that the divisions
were not arbitrary, and that the characters
used did not singly represent letters; by
inference, therefore, as they must be held
to mean something, that in groups they
represented letters or words.
| now went over the groups of figures
after the dots, and found that they ranged
from l to l12. Dividing the numbers be-
tween these points equally at 56, l found,
discarding repetitions, that up to that
number there were 81; above it, %. With
the light had now got all converging on
one point, l should, in long specimen,
have expected far more exact proportion
it was one of my difficulties That had TO
deal with SO short piece of writing The
proportion, however, was, as in the former
n q nvia &c