"
"I wish they had had the secrets of the Chinese and Japanese!" Theo
said.
"I wish so too," echoed Mr. Croyden. "As it was, they struggled along
with their beautiful pottery vases through which the water percolated
just as it does through a flower-pot. And so it was for a time in
China and Japan. It was not until centuries afterward that the Chinese
and Japanese again rediscovered the art they had lost, and by that
time the Greeks and Romans were no more, newer races having taken
their places. Some of the wonderful old enamel work of the Chinese,
however, was never reclaimed, and rare pieces of porcelain of a kind
no one has yet been able to reproduce remain to tell us of the skill
of those ancient Chinese workmen."
"If the Chinese kept everything so secret how did the art of glazed
pottery-making ever get into Europe?" asked Theo.
Mr. Croyden smiled.
"It was a marvel that it ever did," he answered slowly. "Of course as
people traveled little in those days one country did not know much
about what another was doing. But there were wars when much booty was
carried from one land to another; the pilgrimages of the Crusaders,
too, helped to spread a knowledge of widely separated sections.
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