secrets in the papers, no matter how carefully disguised; but the crowning blow to cryptographic communication was given by means of the “Flo” intrigue, which created some little sensation, and was the cause of a good deal of amusement at the close of the year 1853 and the beginning of 1854. On November 29 of the first-named year the following was first seen in the Times:—
FLO.—1821
82374 09 30 84541. 844532 18140650. 8 54584 2401
322650 526 08555 94400 021 12 30 84541 22 05114650. 726
85400 021.
It may be as well to premise that the idea of the “Flo” system was to make an alphabet with the nine numerals and the cipher, and the correspondents evidently prided themselves, poor innocents, on having arranged the letters arbitrarily and not in regular order, and fixed the tell-tale capital I when standing alone at 8:—
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| y | u | o | i | e | a | d | k | h | f |
| s | t | n | m | r | l | q | g | w | p |
| x | c | b | |||||||
| v |
So the communication read: “Flo, thou voice of my heart! Berlin, Thursday. I