Capt. William A. Smith of the 1st Company was an enthusiast about rifle-shooting; and kept agitating the matter with a view to inducing Massachusetts to take it up. Already England had her ranges for volunteers, and in New York the Creedmoor range was in active operation. Capt. Smith presented many excellent reasons why small arms practice should be made part of the militia requirements. In Colonial days every farmer was a good shot--he had to be, in order to keep down “varmints” and to keep off Indians. But when the state became fully settled the reason for popular skill in shooting ceased, and the shooting itself was discontinued. Thruout the Civil War, marksmanship was a neglected factor in the training of both northern and southern armies. By 1875 the need had become so crying that Capt. Smith and others succeeded in convincing the Massachusetts authorities. As soon as genuine rifle competitions were authorized, the members of the regiment, and especially of the 1st Company, stirred themselves to render the matches exciting; as a consequence, up to the time the regiment became interested in artillery, it was noted in the state for success in small arms competitions. From the 1st Company alone went out two such shots as Col. Horace T. Rockwell and Major Charles W. Hinman, both of whom had places on rifle teams which went to England and represented America in international matches held in 1880, 1883 and 1888. After 1878 the 4th and 12th Companies also won fame with the rifle. The annual routine of a militia regiment--weekly drills, two or more field-days, shooting, one or two weeks’ camp, etc.--keeps the members busy along useful lines. But it does not afford a historian much to tell, save as he indicates the steps of progress from year to year. Parades, on the other hand, possess some romantic and popular interest; and it is hard to convince laymen that they have almost no military value. A regiment is largely judged by its appearance on parade. In Col. Wilson’s time there chanced to be included the fateful year, 1875, when eastern Massachusetts celebrated the centennials of Concord and Bunker Hill. With President Grant present from Washington on April 19, there were “great doings.” On June 17 the “crack”-est military organizations from other states visited Boston to lend “tone” to the procession,--the 7th N. Y., the 5th Md., the 1st R. I., the 1st and 2d Pa. That day Gen. W. T. Sherman was reviewing officer. Sherman’s war experience had trained him to judge troops. He was forced to admit that Boston’s parade was a fine military display; and he had to add that the 1st Mass. was not behind the best. On Nov. 29, 1875, by a singular coincidence, Col. Wilson was called upon to parade his regiment as part of the funeral escort for his great namesake, the late Vice-President Henry Wilson, who was interred at Natick.