When we arrived we found his daughter Pris, who I had assumed was still back at Kasanin Clinic at Kansas City in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Mental Health. Pris, as I knew from what Maury had told me, had been a ward of the Federal Government since her third year in high school; tests administered routinely in the public schools had picked up her "dynamism of difficulty," as the psychiatrists are calling it now--in the popular vernacular, her schizophrenic condition.

"She'll cheer you up," Maury said, when I hung back. "That's what you and I both need. She's grown a lot since you saw her last; she's no child anymore. Come on." He dragged me into the house by one arm.

She was seated on the floor in the living room wearing pink pedal pushers. Her hair was cut short and in the years since I had seen her she had lost weight. Spread around her lay colored tile; she was in the process of cracking the tile into irregular pits with a huge pair of long-handled cutting pliers.

"Come look at the bathroom," she said, hopping up. I followed warily after her.

On the bathroom walls she had sketched all sorts of sea monsters and fish, even a mermaid; she had already partially tiled them with every color imaginable. The mermaid had red tiles for tits, one bright tile in the center of each breast.

The panorama both repelled and interested me.

"Why not have little light bulbs for nipples?" I said. "When someone comes in to use the can and turns on the light the nipples light up and guide him on his way."

No doubt she had gotten into this tiling orgy due to years of occupational therapy at Kansas City; the mental health people were keen on anything creative. The Government has literally tens of thousands of patients in their several clinics throughout the country, all busy weaving or painting or dancing or making jewelry or binding books or sewing costumes for plays. And all the patients are there involuntarily, committed by law. Like Pris, many of them had been picked up during puberty, which is the time psychosis tends to strike.