“Come,” said he, “the very first idea which would come into anyone’s head to confuse the letters of a sentence would be to write the words vertically instead of horizontally.”

“Indeed!” said I.

“Now we must see what would be the effect of that, Axel; put down upon this paper any sentence you like, only instead of arranging the letters in the usual way, one after the other, place them in succession in vertical columns, so as to group them together in five or six vertical lines.”

I caught his meaning, and immediately produced the following literary wonder:

“Good,” said the professor, without reading them, “now set down those words in a horizontal line.”

I obeyed, and with this result: