This vague feeling that any and all jars have some sort of personality is further illustrated by the belief that the noise made when a pot is struck is the voice of the spirit within, and the louder note of a pot when broken is similarly the cry of the spirit escaping from the imprisoning clay. The superstition that to close completely an ornament is unlucky must be as widely diffused as any primitive belief, for it is a well-known fact that, among the weavers and embroiderers and painters of Greece and the Balkans, no design is ever quite joined. A tiny bit that does not mar the effect is always left unfinished. The extent and variety of ways in which the Indian depicts his idea of the source or breath of life is vividly illustrated by Cushing in his “Decorative Symbolism.”[261] For example, clouds or many another “phenomenon of nature held sacred and mysterious” by the Indian are conventionalized by the potter for decorative purposes. Thus the terraced or stepped rim of a round bowl is the symbol of the horizon whence rise the clouds. The painted decoration on jars conveys the same idea, and the pendant drops from many an ornament represent the falling rain. The art of ornament is everywhere a conservative one and depends greatly upon the general development of culture in the nation practising it; or, as Dr. Holmes puts it: “The character of ornamentation does not depend so much upon the age of the art, as upon the acquirements of the potter and his people in other arts.” Though the work of all pueblo potters is free-hand, it is never haphazard. The Indian friend whom we watched through a long day of work at Ácoma had no pattern, no visible rule, nor did she measure out any spaces for her most elaborate designs. Though she did not tell us how many more she knew than the ten designs we saw, she did say that she knew exactly from the starting of each what the whole would become. The brush used is very limber, being made from two or three strands of yucca fibre about three inches in length. With this flexible tool she adapted her pattern to the curved surfaces, without embarrassment or erasures, and with as little difficulty as one might have in tracing a flat drawing in a book. It is no doubt a convenience to restrict the preparation of colors for any one particular time, and on that day she used only black, yellow, and brown colors.