many boilers. Instead of calling more and more of these into action, we
seem intent upon repressing them and thus we reduce the capacity of the
plant as a whole. When we should be lighting or replenishing the fires
under the boilers of imagination, initiative, aspiration, and reverence,
we spend our time striving to bank or quench these fires and in playing
and dawdling with the torches of arithmetic, grammar, and history with
which we should be kindling the fires. Thus we diminish the power of the
plant while life's activities are calling for extension and enlargement.
We seem to be trying to train our pupils to work with one or but few
boilers when there are scores of them available if only we knew how to
utilize them.

Hence, it must appear that reserve-power and serenity are virtually
synonymous. The teacher who has achieved serenity never uses all the power
at her command and, in consequence, all her actions are easy, quiet, and
even. She is always stable and never mercurial or spasmodic. She
encounters steep grades, to be sure, but with ease and grace she applies a
bit more power from her abundant supply and so compasses the difficulty
without disturbing the calm. She is fully conscious of her reservoir of
power and can concentrate all her attention upon the work in hand. The
ballast in the hold keeps the mast perpendicular and the sails in position
to catch the favoring breeze. We admire and applaud the graceful ship as
it speeds along its course, giving little heed to the ballast in the hold
that gives it poise and balance. But the ballast is there, else the ship
would not be moving with such majestic mien. Nor was this ballast provided
in a day. Rather it has been accumulating through the years, and bears the
mark of college halls, of libraries, of laboratories, of the auditorium,
of the mountain, the ocean, the starry night, of the deep forest, of the
landscape, and of communion with all that is big and fine.