There is, then, a cipher. And this is the recipe. So extraordinary was the command of language on the part of the writer of these plays, that a few pages of any one of them, if separated into single words, will give a vocabulary out of which any given story can be pieced. Pick out the words you need to say what you desire. Count the number of each word from the top or from the bottom of its column. Then, having five root numbers, ten or a dozen modifiers, the number of the page and the number of words on it, also the number of words in italics or connected by hyphens, you have studied addition and subtraction to little purpose if you can not so combine these various numbers that they shall furnish you, at last, with the number that you need to identify the particular word you have chosen. It is hard work. No wonder Mr. Donnelly covered, with figuring, a bundle of paper that a man can scarcely lift. The present writer consumed quires in a simple application of the cipher key to Hamlet. But it pays; whether you want to make money out of a gullible public, or to expose an ambitious fraud. Mr. Donnelly will gather a fortune from his audacious and singularly successful advertisement; and neither friend nor generous enemy will grudge him that. But, out of his profits, he should erect upon the banks of the Mississippi, near his Nininger home, a statue of himself; a noble statue, with the other features in scholarly repose, while the mouth stretches into a capacious grin, and the eyes are fixed upon a volume in the right hand; not a copy of the “Great Cryptogram,” but an edition of the “Shakespeare” plays, opened at that famous passage in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which has been to him a steadfast rule in all his dealings with the world: “What fools these mortals be.” Transcriber’s Notes --Copyright notice provided as in the original—this e-text is public domain in the country of publication. --Silently corrected obvious errors; non-standard spelling and dialect was left unchanged. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Cryptogram, by J. Gilfin Pyle