Pueri circum innuptaeque puellae
Sacra canuut, funemque manu contingere gaudent.

But the ill-starred folk of Troy could not have shown more enthusiasm in
haling within their walls the fatal wooden horse, than did the men and
boys of Uppingham, who harnessed themselves, some four-score of them, to
that guileless structure, which, though indeed it has some other name, we
will call at present our triumphal car. They harnessed themselves to it
at the east-end of the town, and drew it with the pomp of a swarming
multitude all the length of the long street to its western mouth and half
the way back again. On went that unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a
freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of
sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its
swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and the flow of the
streamers:

Ilia subit mediaeque minans inlabitur urbi.

On it went, with the hum of applauding voices increasing round it, till
the popular fervour found articulate utterance in a burst of jubilant
music. There swept past our ears, first, the moving strains of "Auld
lang syne," and then, as if in answer to the appeal to "Auld
acquaintance," came the jocund chorus "There is nae luck about the
house"--most eloquent assurance that we were welcome home. And then in
turn the music died down, and the crowd round the now halted procession
cheered with a will for "the school," "the Headmaster and the masters,"
and the school taking up with zest the genial challenge, returned the
blessing with such a shout as if they meant the echoes of that merry
evening to make amends in full to street and houses for their fourteen
months of silence.