ciphers, if written somewhat phonetically as usually pronounced, are
thus:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
nawt wun too three fawr faiv six sev'n eit nain

by which it will be seen that the ten names contain eight but only
eight different vowels, 0 and 4 having the same vowel _aw_, while 5
and 9 have _ai_. Both these pairs caused confusion; the first of them
was cured by substituting the name of the letter O for the name of
the zero cipher, which happens to be identical with it in form,[9] and
this introduced a ninth vowel sound _ou_ (= owe), but the other pair
remained such a constant source of error, that persons who had their
house put on the general telephonic system would request the Post
Office to give them a number that did not contain a 9 or a 5; and it
is pretty certain that had not the system of automatic dialling, which
was invented for quite another purpose, got rid of the trouble, one of
these two ciphers would have changed its name at the Post Office.

[Footnote 9: There is a coincidence of accidents--that the Arabic
sign for zero is the same with our letter O, and that the name of our
letter O (= owe) is the same as the present tense of _ought_, which
is the vulgar name (for nought) of the Arabic zero, and that its vowel
does not occur in the name of any cipher.]

[Sidenote: AEsthetic objections.]

In the effect of uniformity it may be said that utilitarian and
aesthetic considerations are generally at one; and this blank statement
must here suffice, for the principle could not be briefly dealt
with: but it follows from it that the proper aesthetic objections to
homophones are never clearly separable from the scientific. I submit
the following considerations. Any one who seriously attempts to write
well-sounding English will be aware how delicately sensitive our ear
is to the repetition of sounds. He will often have found it necessary
to change some unimportant word because its accented vowel recalled
and jarred with another which was perhaps as far as two or three lines
removed from it: nor does there seem to be any rule for this, since
apparently similar repetitions do not always offend, and may even be
agreeable. The relation of the sound to the meaning is indefinable,
but in homophones it is blatant; for instance the common expression
_It is well_ could not be used in a paragraph where the word well (=
well-spring) had occurred. Now, this being so, it is very