CHAPTER III_Ciphers for the little folks

You know now the beginning of the Alphabet, the careful way it was planned

and made, and how finally after so many years it has come to be used in

the form in which we have it today. Do you remember that when Albert Duerer

made his Alphabet of Roman letters he made more than one form of each

letter--there were three _A_'s, for example. Would you like to know why he

did this? Plate IX shows you two other kinds of Alphabets made long ago by

a Spanish artist, Francisco Lucas. Look at the Italic capital letters in

the upper part of this Plate. You can easily see that there are two

different forms of the same letters, can you not? But now look at the

small letters. You still see that there are two examples of each letter,

but they are so much alike that you will have to look very carefully to

see the difference between the two forms. Why do you suppose this artist

went to the trouble to make these letters so much alike, and yet

different? Do you not think that this would be a very strange thing to do

unless there was a good reason for it? Look at the lower part of the Plate

and you will see that there are two different forms of the small Roman

letters also. Now turn back to Lesson XV. You see that by using a capital

letter for the _a_ form and a small letter for the _b_ form you were able

to hide within the phrase "_Biliteral Cipher_" the word, "_key_." You can

easily see that this would not be a good way to hide a secret, for the

difference between the large and small letters is not only easy to see,

but looks so strange that it is the first thing you notice. Now suppose

that instead of using a capital letter for the _a_ form and a small letter

for the _b_ form you use for each letter of the Alphabet, both capital and

small, two forms which were very much alike but still were different. In

the following line--

[Illustration]

you see the same phrase "_Biliteral Cipher_," but it does not look strange

to you, does it? Still, if you will study it carefully you will see that

the first _i_ is different from the second, and that the first _l_ in

"_Biliteral_" is different from the second _l_. You have guessed by this

time that the phrase "_Biliteral Cipher_," as it stands here, also

contains a hidden word. The word is "_the_." This phrase was made to

contain the word "_the_" by using the two forms of letters which you see

in the upper part of Plate IX and which were called "_doubles_" by the

printers who used them several hundred years ago. Now do you begin to see

how important these two forms are?

Look again at the little Shakespeare poem in the Italic alphabet on Plate

VIII. Now that you know about _doubles_ you can see, if you have learned

to use your eyes, that we have hidden a secret within this poem too. Would

you like to know what it is? We will help you to work it out by giving you

what is called a _Classifier_ which will make it easy to _decipher_ the

verse. On this Classifier, which you will find on Plate X, the very same

Italic letters that you saw in Plate IX have been arranged so that all the

_a_ form letters are above the shaded part and all the _b_ form letters

below. Now if you will tear out this whole page and carefully cut out

these shaded parts you can place this page over the lines of the poem in

italic letters. This will help you to decide to which form the letters of

the poem belong. Place the Classifier over the poem so that the first

letter, the capital =H= of _Have_, is between the _a_ form and the _b_

form capital =H= on the Classifier. You will see that this capital =H= of

_Have_ is the _a_ form. Now below the Classifier has been placed something

which will help you still more. All the words of the poem have been

divided and have been placed into groups of five letters. As we decided

that the =H= of _Have_ belongs to the _a_ form, we have placed an _a_

beneath the =H= in the first group of five letters. Now move the

Classifier so that the =a= in _Have_ comes between the _a_ form =a= and

the _b_ form =a= on the Classifier. You will see that this letter also

belongs to the _a_ form. If you will do the same to the rest of the

letters of this first group you will find that they are all _a_ form

letters. Now what letter of the Alphabet does a group of five _a_'s stand

for?--=A=, does it not? So the first letter in our secret is =A=. Now

place the Classifier over the rest of the letters of the poem and see to

what form they belong, just as we have done for you in the first group. If

you do your work carefully you will find the hidden secret.

If we can hide one word in "_Biliteral Cipher_" and a sentence in a short

poem, do you not see how a whole story could be hidden so carefully within

a book that it might not be discovered for many, many years?

Helen Louise Ricketts

[Illustration: PLATE I

ALPHABET by ALBERT DUeRER (A. D. 1525)]

[Illustration: PLATE II

CONSTRUCTION OF ALPHABET]

[Illustration: PLATE III