e?

No, there are but fourteen. A check to begin with.

But wait; the dots make a difference. Let us increase the list by
assuming that angles or squares thus marked are different letters from
those of the same shape in which no dots or sketches occur, and we bring
the list up to twenty. That is better.

The dotted or otherwise marked squares or angles are separate
characters.

Now, which one of these appears most frequently? The square, which we
have already decided must be either a or i. In the one short word or
phrase we are at present considering, it occurs twice. Now supposing
that this square stands for a, which according to Poe's theory it
should, a coming before s in the frequency in which it occurs in
ordinary English sentences, how would the phrase look (still according
to Poe) with dashes taking the place of the remaining unknown letters?

Thus

A-a ---- if the whole is a single word.

A- a- -- if the whole is a phrase. That it was a phrase I was convinced,
possibly because one clings to so neat a theory as the one which makes
the shading, so marked a feature in all the specimens before us, the
sign of division into words. Let us take these seven characters as a
phrase then and not as a word. What follows?

The dashes following the two a's stand for letters, each of which should
make a word when joined to a. What are these letters? Run over the
alphabet and see. The only letters making sense when joined with a are
h, m, n, s, t or x. Discarding the first and the last, we have these
four words, am, an, as, at. Is it possible to start any intelligible
phrase with any two of these arranged in any conceivable way? No. Then
[] can not stand for a. Let us see if it does for i. The words of two
letters headed by i we find to be if, in, is and it. A more promising
collection than the first. One could easily start a phrase with any of
these, even with any two of them such as If it, Is in, Is it, It is. []
is then the symbol of i, and some one of the above named combinations
forms the beginning of the short phrase ending with a word of three
letters symbolized by V [-].<

What word?

If my reasoning is correct up to this point, it should not be hard to
determine.

First, one of these three symbols, the V, is a repetition of one of
those we have already shown to be s, t, f, or n. Of the remaining two,
[-] <, one must be a vowel, that is, it must be either u, e, o, u, or y;
i being already determined upon.