he so much preferred to the military, and he went as to the chief he had so long known and loved and followed.
It would be his old friend Chase who presented him to the President, but their conversation was soon interrupted by the entrance of an aide who announced the arrival in the White House grounds of an Indiana regiment passing through Washington, which, as seems to have been the case with most regiments passing through the Capital, demanded a speech from the President. And Lincoln complied, and as he arose to go out he asked my grandfather to accompany him, and they continued their talk on the way. But when they stood in the White House portico, and the regiment beheld the President and saluted him with its lifted cheer, the aide stepped to my grandfather's side, and much to his chagrin—for he had been held by the President while he finished a story—told him that it would be necessary for him to drop a few paces to the rear. It was a little contretemps that embarrassed my grandfather, but Lincoln, with his fine and delicate perceptions, divined the whole situation, and met it with that kindness which was so great a part of the humor and humanness in him, by saying:
"You see, Mr. Brand, they might not know which was the President."
It was not long after that he was at Appomattox and the first to issue rations to the hungry Confederates who had just surrendered, and no act of his life gave him quite as much satisfaction as to have been the first to pour his whole supply of hard-
