The story
“One little girl lived in the country. She was a model child, everybody admitted it, but it cannot be denied that she was more or less of a crybaby and coward. Her mother, a prim, respectable country woman, was very fond of little Ann. The mother had a sister, concerning whom she was more or less reticent, for the sister was a ‘lady magician,’ and was proud of the ‘time’ she did land in vaudeville. The lady magician, playing a city near her old home, decided to run down and see her sister. She brought her little girl along, and there were many exclamations of wonder when it was seen how much the two children resembled each other. The children talked it over too, while they were along together, and each told the other of her life. The country child was envious when she heard that her cousin lived in the beautiful atmosphere of the theatre, and the stage child wistfully expressed a desire to have ‘a real home,’ and not be compelled to make long jumps from town to town. The same idea struck both of them simultaneously. If each would be happier in the other’s life, why not shift identities; so they exchanged clothes, and the lady magician went away not knowing that a strange little girl had been ‘palmed off’ on her.
“Now the little girls had been so busy chattering that they had been unable to post each other on their new lives. The stage child was her mother’s aide and accomplice. At one period in the act she was placed on the stage, a screen put in position around her, and when the screen was removed, there was no little girl, but a moment later the child tripped up the main isle of the theatre, having been wafted outside in some extraordinary way. On the afternoon of the country child’s debut, however, something went wrong with the signals, and when the screen was removed, there was the dear little child, looking wonderingly around. Wild with rage, the magician made a grab for her, but the girl escaped, and made a beeline for her home in the country nearby. Luckily she got inside, unnoticed, except for by the former stage child. The latter was very glad to change identities, and the country girl was very thankful, especially when the magician arrived, grabbed her own child, and punished her for the awkwardness of the other in the theatre. The little country girl believed that she had got the best of the bargain, but just then several boys arrived, boys who in days gone by had pulled her hair and made her cry. Now they were weeping themselves, and their indignant mother, accompanying the delegation, explained to the unhappy country woman that her child had beaten their boys and had attempted to assassinate them. There was a tiny silver lining in the stage child’s cloud, for her cousin got just what she did, and got it good.”
Summary from The Moving Picture World · 27 July 1912
