The Child Is the Meaning
of This Life
DELMORE SCHWARTZ
SAMUEL
HART was the youngest child in a family of four children.
·His father, who had been a strong ambitious man, died of over–
work, that is to say, of trying with too much passion and intensity to
become rich. At the time of his death his younger daughter, Sarah,
was already married and his older daughter, Rebecca, had already
begun a career as a designer of dresses. Leonard, the young man of
the family and the third of the children, was studying to be a doctor
and supporting himself by helping to run a cigar store at night. Thus
the death of the father left the family intact as a family, especially
since the mother Ruth Hart was a powerful human being who lived
through her devotion to her children.
Samuel was a spoiled child and his mother felt that he was
willful. But she felt that this was his nature and no one could change
a person's nature. Being much younger than any of the other children,
Samuel was also spoiled by his two sisters and
his
big brother Leonard.
Thus one might say that ihhe fact of being the youngest child was
the most important trait of his being, the fact that he had two older
sisters and an older brother was also very important in him.
Samuel did not like to go to school and he did not like to work.
He liked to hang out with the boys on the block and he was infatu–
ated with games and with gambling. At school, the only subject in
which he did well was mathematics, perhaps because his interest in
gambling had
mad~
calculation interesting and important to him.
He wanted to quit high school because he did not succeed as
a student, and though his brother Leonard sought to persuade him
not to stop before he had finished, after a time his mother felt it was
foolish to force a boy to study when he disliked school so much.
"He will never be a student, anyway," she said, "it is not his
nature."
She was consoled by the brilliance of Leonard, a brilliance which
did not, in fact, exist, for Leonard succeeded in getting from one
step to the Iiext step on the long journey to becoming a doctor only
