he dispute; and it ended, as all disputes
between ladies will end, if they happen to have a stick in their hands
when they quarrel, by their beating each other. The mayoress gave the
alderman's wife a slap with her part of the wand--it was immediately
returned--when lo and behold----

It must be here explained, that although the wand when entire had the
power of changing people as we have described, yet when broken, its
power was divided between the two parts; the one end retaining its half
power of changing only the upper portion of the figure, while the other
could only change the lower half.

The blows were exchanged. The mayoress, who was a tall woman,
immediately sank down a foot and a half, the upper portion of her plump
body was now resting upon the two diminutive legs of a two-feet-high
fairy--which could only make a stride of six inches at a time. The
alderman's lady, on the contrary, retained her lower portion of her
body; but instead of her lovely face, and graceful neck, she carried a
little round head and shoulders, such as is represented in the figure of
Puck. They must all have been very tipsy, for the others thought that
they had put on masquerade dresses--the sticks were seized, one by
Rochester, the other by the king, and they struck right and left--the
lord mayor had the head and beard of a satyr--Rochester had the feet of
a goat--the king appeared to have the bust of a beautiful woman, with a
pair of splendid blue gossamer wings to his shoulders--one of the
aldermen found himself with a naiad's tail, and he fell flat on the
terrace, with great violence; all of them, men and women, were
transformed into some shape or another--and the more strange the
metamorphosis, the louder they all laughed and shouted. Some indeed were
very much alarmed; particularly one little woman, who whispered to her
neighbour, that she believed she was a little man.

But the scene did not end here: the two parts of the wand found their
way into other hands, who as they capered and jumped beat their
companions. King Charles, struck by the lower part of the wand, found
his transformation complete--he was now a lovely woman;--Rochester was
turned by a blow, into a perfect satyr--while the mayoress, struck by
the same portion, sank down into a little fairy not two feet high. As
the sticks were passed round there was no end to the transformations:
the fat alderman who had fallen down with a fish's tail, now became a
perfect nai