It was not until the People’s Theater produced an erotic piece by a new Danish writer, whose name was unknown to the critics, that the house began to fill. “We’ve struck our pace!” Farson declared jubilantly. He exercised all his journalistic ingenuity in whetting the appetite of the New York public for the play with immediate results in the box office. Brainard, although he had no high opinion of the play, felt relieved not to encounter at each performance the same dreary waste of empty seats. He comforted himself with the thought that if the Public could be induced to come to a “sex play,” they might be captured for less hectic entertainments. MacNaughton and Farson, with the easy sophistry of the theater, maintained that what people cared to see must be good art and stoutly defended the Danish piece. But their good luck did not hold. At the Saturday matinée of the first week the police visited the theater and the curtain was ordered down after the bedroom scene in the second act. There was a mild demonstration among the audience, whose curiosity was defeated, and the price of their tickets was repaid to all who demanded it. The press made considerable noise over the event. “We’re made!” MacNaughton announced in great excitement. Farson was busy with the reporters, trying to get the most out of this unexpected bit of publicity. Brainard set forth in search of the virtuous police commissioner to protest in the name of outraged Art. But the commissioner was impervious to Art. “That sort of show don’t go in New York,” he pronounced austerely, in reply to Brainard’s argument that the play had been given even more boldly in Vienna and Berlin and was held to be a “moral document” by the best European critics. The police commissioner seemed to think that New York had a different and better morality than that obtaining in Europe. He was obdurate. When Brainard reported his failure to his associates, Farson took it very lightly. “All we’ll have to do,” he suggested, “is to make some slight changes—put a screen in front of the bed scene—and see the inspector. I’ll take care of him.” But Brainard refused to pay the police to be allowed to produce his play, and so on Monday night the People’s Theater remained dark. “And just look at all that money!” MacNaughton wailed, as something of a crowd began to form in front of the theater for the first time. “The governor is a miserable puritan,” he said to Farson, wringing his hands. “To think of turning his back on his luck just because of the morality of the New York police! He ought to run a Sunday school.”