best
answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among
them, what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then, effectual
care is taken to secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners
in chains. These papers are delivered to a set of artists, very
dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and
letters: for instance, they can discover a close stool, to signify a
privy council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the
plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime minister; the gout, a high
priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of
grandees; a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an
employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and
bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty tun, a
general; a running sore, the administration. {455}

"When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the
learned among them call acrostics and anagrams. First, they can decipher
all initial letters into political meanings. Thus _N_, shall signify a
plot; _B_, a regiment of horse; _L_, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by
transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can
lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example,
if I should say, in a letter to a friend, 'Our brother Tom has just got
the piles,' a skilful decipherer would discover, that the same letters
which compose that sentence, may be analysed into the following words,
'Resist ---, a plot is brought home--The tour.' And this is the
anagrammatic method."

The professor made me great acknowledgments for communicating these
observations, and promised to make honourable mention of me in his
treatise.

I saw nothing in this country that could invite me to a longer
continuance, and began to think of returning home to England.

CHAPTER VII.

The author leaves Lagado: arrives at Maldonada. No ship ready. He takes
a short voyage to Glubbdubdrib. His reception by the governor.

The continent, of which this kingdom is apart, extends itself, as I have
reason to believe, eastward, to that unknown tract of America westward of
California; and north, to the Pacific Ocean, which is not above a hundred
and fifty miles from Lagado; where there is a good port, and much
commerce with the great island of Luggnagg, situated to the north-west
about 29 degrees north la