Book Two

Chapter VI.

On Direct Ordinary Strewing of Letters,
Saliently accomplished.

The second Mode connected with the Order of Letters is writing by process of Transference, or Scattering of Letters. Here the letters which for the purpose of revealing the secret, have been placed or are to be placed in Order are interchangeably transferred and transposed from their own position to another place or line. I say transposed, for this Mode too may not inaptly be called by the name Transposition. But since that word has been more fittingly reserved for the Interchange of Letters, which is treated in Bk. V., we do better to use here the word Transference. And, yet, perhaps, the process might more appropriately be called,–by the approximate principle, namely,–the Dispersion, or the Strewing, or the Scattering, of Letters. Howbeit, this Scattering takes place by Ordinary, by Arbitrary, or by Artificial arrangement.

That Scattering, or Strewing, of Letters, again, which depends on a fixed order and a fixed principle of arrangement, takes place by Direct Mode, by Oblique Mode, or by Inverted Mode.

            Direct Ordinary Strewing, in its turn, takes place, on the basis of process, Saliently, by Graduation, or Successively.

Salient Strewing of Letters takes place when by a leap, as it were, the letters jump from one position to another, and this process may be accomplished on the basis of words, or on the basis of lines, or on the basis of a different order. (1) On the basis of words the process is accomplished in various ways. For either all the letters of the words are Salient letters, or certain ones only. If certain ones only are such, then the process may be accomplished (for example) in the case of two words by transferring and interchanging the first letters, and also the last letters, of the two words thus taken together. Something was said on this head when, in the first chapter of this Book, in the Paragraph beginning Alteration by Transposition I discussed speech.  But there, owing to the extreme difficulty attending the process in speech, I spoke only of the first letters.  Here the last letters also are interchanged.  See Schwenter, pp. 221, 222.  Let the following be an example:  Uns ist nicht hohers als der liebe Fried zu wunschen.  This should be written thus:  Int uss hichs nohert dir aes fiebd lriee wn zunscheu.  If all the letters are Salient letters, the process may take place (for example) in the case of one word  thus:  the first letter in point of order becomes the second; the second, the first;  the fourth, the third;  the third, the fourth;  and so on.  For example, Virtus is rearranged thus:  Iutrsu.  (2)  On the basis of lines the process is this:  to draw two or three lines and to place the first letter of the hidden sentence in the first line, the second letter in the second line, and the third letter in the third line.  (3) Finally, the process is accomplished by the use of what may be called a sort of abacus, wherein numbers indicate the places to which the letters are to be transferred in order.  The abacus is made thus:  draw four