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Show with warmth and happiness. She was a strong, buoyant, wonderful person whom I took completely for granted. To her the world and everything in it was beautiful and wonderful, and one couldn't help being swept along a cloud of rosy optimism. Mother expected me to stand at the head of my class in school, and it never occurred to me to try for anything less. Very little was said about it directly except that every small success was duly noted and appreciated. Mother and Father seldom scolded, but never passed up a chance to commend us."21 As Eyring grew older, his father placed increasing confidence in and responsibility on him. More than once he remembers being sent on errands for his father over many miles of still primitive country. On one occasion he was sent with his Uncle Vernon Romney, who was only fourteen years old, with a cow from their ranch to Dublan. Unfortu- nately the two boys forgot to take any drinking water along and, before the journey was completed, they had developed a tremendous thirst. When water was obtained, he recalls that it never tasted better than at that time. On another occasion, the river through their ranch was at flood stage, and in order to get home Edward Eyring and his son would have to cross the dangerous river or face a very long delay. At the time, the nine-year-old Eyring saw crossing the swollen river as very risky, but his father said they could do it and so they proceeded. Edward Eyring found a place where the river was running deep but slower, and then arranged for his son to cross above him just in case the swift current swept him into the river. the river. He would then be able to fish his son out of They crossed the river without incident, but the overriding confidence of father in son and son in father was unmistakable. Eyring later wrote of his father: "My father had a way of making |
