For analyzing Voynich transcriptions and also maybe for other cryptanalytical purposes, it'd be nice to have a script that can intelligently guess which letters of an unknown alphabet are capital letters so that corpora can be normalized.

find_capitals.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

@words = File.open("moby_dick_long.txt", "r").read.strip.split(/\W+/).compact.reject{|w| w.length <= 1}
@alphabet = @words.map{|w| w.split(//)}.flatten.uniq

letters_at_beginning_of_word = @words.map{|w| w[0]}
letters_in_tail_of_word      = @words.map{|w| w[1..-1].split(//)}.flatten

# p letters_at_beginning_of_word
# p letters_in_tail_of_word
@potential_capital_letters = (letters_at_beginning_of_word - letters_in_tail_of_word).uniq.sort
p @potential_capital_letters
exit

@word_groups = @words.inject({}) do |h, w|
  if w.length > 1
    h[w[1..-1]] ||= []
    h[w[1..-1]] << w[0]
  end
  h
end

p @word_groups
exit
@letters = @word_groups.reject{|_, heads| heads.uniq.count != 2 }.map(&:sort)

p @letters

# @letters.group_by{|g| g.uniq.sort}.values.map(&:flatten).sort_by(&:length).select{|x| x.length > 220}.each{|x| p x}

# @letters.group_by{|_| _}.values.sort_by(&:count).map(&:first).each{|x| p x}

moby_dick_short.txt

Call me Ishmael Some years ago never mind how long precisely having little or no
money in my purse and nothing particular to interest me on shore I thought I
would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world It is a way I
have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation Whenever I find
myself growing grim about the mouth whenever it is a damp drizzly November in my
soul whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses and
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet and especially whenever my hypos
get such an upper hand of me that it requires a strong moral principle to
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street and methodically knocking
people s hats off then I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can
This is my substitute for pistol and ball With a philosophical flourish Cato
throws himself upon his sword I quietly take to the ship There is nothing
surprising in this If they but knew it almost all men in their degree some time
or other cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me There
now is your insular city of the Manhattoes belted round by wharves as Indian
isles by coral reefs commerce surrounds it with her surf Right and left the
streets take you waterward Its extreme downtown is the battery where that noble
mole is washed by waves and cooled by breezes which a few hours previous were
out of sight of land Look at the crowds of water gazers there Circumambulate the
city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip and
from thence by Whitehall northward What do you see Posted like silent sentinels
all around the town stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean
reveries Some leaning against the spiles some seated upon the pier heads some
looking over the bulwarks of ships from China some high aloft in the rigging as
if striving to get a still better seaward peep But these are all landsmen of
week days pent up in lath and plaster tied to counters nailed to benches
clinched to desks How then is this Are the green fields gone What do they here
But look here come more crowds pacing straight for the water and seemingly bound
for a dive Strange Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land
loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice No They must
get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in And there
they stand miles of them leagues Inlanders all they come from lanes and alleys
streets and avenues north east south and west Yet here they all unite Tell me
does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships
attract them thither Once more Say you are in the country in some high land of
lakes Take almost any path you please and ten to one it carries you down in a
dale and leaves you there by a pool in the stream There is magic in it Let the
most absent minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries stand that man on
his legs set his feet a going and he will infallibly lead you to water if water
there be in all that region Should you ever be athirst in the great American
desert try this experiment if your caravan happen to be supplied with a
metaphysical professor Yes as every one knows meditation and water are wedded
for ever But here is an artist He desires to paint you the dreamiest shadiest
quietest most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley of the Saco
What is the chief element he employs There stand his trees each with a hollow
trunk as if a hermit and a crucifix were within and here sleeps his meadow and
there sleep his cattle and up from yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke Deep into
distant woodlands winds a mazy way reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains
bathed in their hill side blue But though the picture lies thus tranced and
though this pine tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd s
head yet all were vain unless the shepherd s eye were fixed upon the magic
stream before him Go visit the Prairies in June when for scores on scores of
miles you wade knee deep among Tiger lilies what is the one charm wanting Water
there is not a drop of water there Were Niagara but a cataract of sand would you
travel your thousand miles to see it Why did the poor poet of Tennessee upon
suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver deliberate whether to buy him a coat
which he sadly needed or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach
Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him at some
time or other crazy to go to sea Why upon your first voyage as a passenger did
you yourself feel such a mystical vibration when first told that you and your
ship were now out of sight of land Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy
Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity and own brother of Jove Surely all
this is not without meaning And still deeper the meaning of that story of
Narcissus who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the
fountain plunged into it and was drowned But that same image we ourselves see in
all rivers and oceans It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life and
this is the key to it all Now when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea
whenever I begin to grow hazy about the eyes and begin to be over conscious of
my lungs I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a passenger
For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse and a purse is but a rag
unless you have something in it Besides passengers get sea sick grow quarrelsome
don t sleep of nights do not enjoy themselves much as a general thing no I never
go as a passenger nor though I am something of a salt do I ever go to sea as a
Commodore or a Captain or a Cook I abandon the glory and distinction of such
offices to those who like them For my part I abominate all honourable
respectable toils trials and tribulations of every kind whatsoever It is quite
as much as I can do to take care of myself without taking care of ships barques
brigs schooners and what not And as for going as cook though I confess there is
considerable glory in that a cook being a sort of officer on ship board yet
somehow I never fancied broiling fowls though once broiled judiciously buttered
and judgmatically salted and peppered there is no one who will speak more
respectfully not to say reverentially of a broiled fowl than I will It is out of
the idolatrous dotings of the old Egyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river
horse that you see the mummies of those creatures in their huge bake houses the
pyramids No when I go to sea I go as a simple sailor right before the mast plumb
down into the forecastle aloft there to the royal mast head True they rather
order me about some and make me jump from spar to spar like a grasshopper in a
May meadow And at first this sort of thing is unpleasant enough It touches one s
sense of honour particularly if you come of an old established family in the
land the Van Rensselaers or Randolphs or Hardicanutes And more than all if just
previous to putting your hand into the tar pot you have been lording it as a
country schoolmaster making the tallest boys stand in awe of you The transition
is a keen one I assure you from a schoolmaster to a sailor and requires a strong
decoction of Seneca and the Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it But even
this wears off in time What of it if some old hunks of a sea captain orders me
to get a broom and sweep down the decks What does that indignity amount to
weighed I mean in the scales of the New Testament Do you think the archangel
Gabriel thinks anything the less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey
that old hunks in that particular instance Who ain t a slave Tell me that Well
then however the old sea captains may order me about however they may thump and
punch me about I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right that
everybody else is one way or other served in much the same way either in a
physical or metaphysical point of view that is and so the universal thump is
passed round and all hands should rub each other s shoulder blades and be
content Again I always go to sea as a sailor because they make a point of paying
me for my trouble whereas they never pay passengers a single penny that I ever
heard of On the contrary passengers themselves must pay And there is all the
difference in the world between paying and being paid The act of paying is
perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed
upon us But   what will compare with it The urbane activity with which
a man receives money is really marvellous considering that we so earnestly
believe money to be the root of all earthly ills and that on no account can a
monied man enter heaven Ah how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition
Finally I always go to sea as a sailor because of the wholesome exercise and
pure air of the fore castle deck For as in this world head winds are far more
prevalent than winds from astern that is if you never violate the Pythagorean
maxim so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter deck gets his atmosphere
at second hand from the sailors on the forecastle He thinks he breathes it first
but not so In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many
other things at the same time that the leaders little suspect it But wherefore
it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a merchant sailor I should
now take it into my head to go on a whaling voyage this the invisible police
officer of the Fates who has the constant surveillance of me and secretly dogs
me and influences me in some unaccountable way he can better answer than any one
else And doubtless my going on this whaling voyage formed part of the grand
programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago It came in as a sort
of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances I take it that
this part of the bill must have run something like this   
            
   Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage
managers the Fates put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage when
others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies and short and easy
parts in genteel comedies and jolly parts in farces though I cannot tell why
this was exactly yet now that I recall all the circumstances I think I can see a
little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under
various disguises induced me to set about performing the part I did besides
cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own
unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment Chief among these motives was the
overwhelming idea of the great whale himself Such a portentous and mysterious
monster roused all my curiosity Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled
his island bulk the undeliverable nameless perils of the whale these with all
the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds helped to sway
me to my wish With other men perhaps such things would not have been inducements
but as for me I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote I love
to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts Not ignoring what is good I
am quick to perceive a horror and could still be social with it would they let
me since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the
place one lodges in By reason of these things then the whaling voyage was
welcome the great flood gates of the wonder world swung open and in the wild
conceits that swayed me to my purpose two and two there floated into my inmost
soul endless processions of the whale and mid most of them all one grand hooded
phantom like a snow hill in the air