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but notwithstanding their distinct use in that table, a certain modification of them has been effected, to produce the desired object, without interfering with the simplicity of that arrangement. The letters s and x, the students know, are applied to designate the 0, or cipher, as the words wise and vex will exhibit, making the figures 80 and 60; but if those letters were solely appropriated to the cipher, we should lose the very valuable assistance of all the words that begin with them: thus Smile, Son, Extent, &c. &c. could not be used; for the first, if changed into figures, would be 035; the second 02; the third 0121; which arrangement of figures never occurs, except in decimal fractions, to which branch it may be applied without any alteration. But for all the other parts of arithmetic, the following addition to the first plan will be found applicable.
Whenever the letters s or x, exist solely in a word, neither preceded nor followed by any other consonant, such word is to be a character for 100; thus the words Sea, So, See, As, Us, Ox, Axe, &c. &c. are each expressive of 100. If we subjoin another consonant to either of them, they each retain the character of One hundred, and the added consonant has its original value: the word Sat will be 101, the S, being one hundred, and the t a 1—Son, 102—Some, 103—Oxen, 102, &c. &c. But if we increase the number of consonants beyond two, whether three, four, five, or six, &c. in a word or sentence, the s and x so situated (beginning them) merely supply the first unit's place, and have the same power as the letters t or q, and become either hundreds, thousands, or millions, as they have consonants added to them. The word Spice is 197, the S being 1, the p and c being 97. Share is 124. If we add to the former, an s, and make it Spice, it becomes 1970, as a D
