Altho it may be hard to “live up” to the responsibilities of a noble ancestry and one is ever open to the unkind suggestion that his best is like the potatoes, “under ground,” still it is not the fault of a man, nor of an organization, if the record of the past contains worthy, and even heroic, passages. Not only is the Coast Artillery the surviving heir to most of Boston’s finest militia traditions and honors, but by the consolidation of 1878 it also inherits the proud record of the Third Regiment, the militia force of Pilgrim-land and the Cape. Even a more modest organization than this would be excused for feeling thrills when it remembers “auld lang syne”; and the gentle reader will peruse these pages in vain if he fails to see why. Some day the command will establish a military museum of its own, in which to display its trophies and relics. Its battle-flags have mostly passed out of its reach and are irrevocably in the possession of the Commonwealth. When one visits the Hall of Flags and gazes reverently upon the tattered silk banners of the 1st Infantry, five in number, the 3d Infantry, two of them, the 24th Infantry, two, the 42d Infantry and the 43d and the 44th, two each, and in the Spanish War case the two colors of the 1st Heavy Artillery, seventeen flags in all, one may possibly remember that a Massachusetts Coast Artilleryman would be whispering to himself, “Those are our battle-flags.” And there are many other colors in the cases, under which members of the command fought during the Civil War--those of the 4th, 5th, 6th, 13th, 29th Infantry Regiments, and the 4th Heavy Artillery. Indeed the sole battle-flag remaining from the Mexican War, that of the 1st Mass. Volunteer Infantry, may be claimed as a Coast Artillery trophy, since it was given by those who had borne it into the custody of the veterans who made up the National Guards, the 9th Co. of Coast Artillery. The National Guards eventually surrendered this color to the Commonwealth. No less a personage than Gen. Winfield Scott had been the original donor of the flag.