The Times

Soldiers Fish.

(Montauk Letter to New York Sun.)

Though the land has ceased furnishing subsistence, there remains the water, and the regulars have turned fishermen, not for sport, but the serious purpose of filling up an empty interior. The volunteers, it must be remembered, are now, and have for some time been pretty well fed on assortments of home-prepared food in large boxes, but the regulars haven't had the benefit of that sort of thing to any extent. On a day when the rations had been particularly bad two colored troopers announced that they were going to the fresh-water lake near by to catch some fish. This was received with open doubt owing to the lack of tackle. This need they filled by collecting all the string they could beg or borrow, attaching to it the familiar bent pin of fiction which is popularly supposed, in conjunction with the freckled urchin, to catch all the biggest fish, while the metropolitan sportsman with a $47 rod and fancy flies looks on with rage in his heart, dug some worms, and in the absence of a pole, for there isn't a tree in camp, flung out their lines from the shore. The perch from Lake Wyandanhe are voracious. They bit in numbers. Many escaped the primitive hooks, but enough were hauled ashore to gladden the hollowness of half a dozen troopers. News of the success spread, and the next day the shore was lined with military Izaak Waltons, putting their skill to the test.

Pins took on a high commercial value, string became more precious than tobacco, and every evening the brightness of many little fires showed where the self-helping regular, having helped himself from nature's storehouse, was cooking his extra and best meal of the day.