In 1896 he supported Mr. Bryan, and his Republican neighbors said:
"Poor old Major Brand! His mind must be affected!"
It was an effort for him to get out to the polls, but he went, beholding in that conflict, as he could in any conflict however confused and clouded, the issue of free men above any other issue. He did not get out much after that, even when that last summer the few remnants of the 66th regiment gathered in Urbana to hold the annual reunion. He could not so much as get up town to greet his old comrades, and they sent word that in the afternoon they would march in review before his home. He was wheeled out on the veranda, and there he sat while his old regiment, the fifty or sixty gray, broken men, marched past. They saluted as they went by, and he returned the salutes with tears streaming down the cheeks where I had never seen tears before. And he said with a little choking laugh:
"Why, look at the boys!"
It was not long after, that six of us, his grandsons, bore him out of the old home forever. And on his coffin were the two things that expressed him best, I think—his roses and his flag.
VI
The incalculable influence of the spoken word and
the consequent responsibility that weighs upon the
