Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/255

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QUEER COINCIDENCES.
239

ing to the second letter of each word, and so in the other dictionaries on to the last letter.

Again, each dictionary was divided into several others, according to the numerical characteristics placed at the end of each word. Many words appeared repeatedly in several of these subdivisions.

The work is yet unfinished, although the classification already amounts, I believe, to nearly half a million words.

From some of these, dictionaries were made of those words only which by transposition of their letters formed anagrams. A few of these are curious:—

Opposite. Similarity. Satirical.
vote veto fuel flue odes dose
acre care taps pats bard drab
evil veil tubs buts poem mope
ever veer vast vats poet tope
lips slip note tone trio riot
cask sack cold clod star rats
fowl wolf evil vile wive view
gods dogs arms mars nabs bans
tory tyro rove over tame mate
tars rats lips lisp acts cats

There are some verbal puzzles costing much time to solve which may be readily detected by these dictionaries. Such, for instance, is the sentence,

I tore ten Persian MSS.,

which it is required to form into one word of eighteen letters. The first process is to put opposite each letter the number of times it occurs, thus:—