Appointment in New Jersey

A score of riders and two dozen hounds had an appointment with a New Jersey fox one day last week. It was, as the club's pro huntsman told a New York Times reporter afterward, "the longest, hardest, most harrowing and most exhausting appointment" in the history of the Essex Fox Hound Hunt Club.

The quarry was first sighted at 3:15 p.m., near Mrs. Charles Scribner Jr.'s estate, "Dew Hollow," in northern Somerset County. When the fox saw the hounds coming, he lit out for the south. On the way, he led hounds and huntsmen across two state highways and through a couple of startled villages. Said Mrs. Scribner, the club's master-of-hounds: "It was nothing short of a miracle that none of the hounds was killed in the traffic." The fox picked up a long lead in the streets of North Branch (pop. 250), then trotted back into the fields. By 5:30, fox and hounds had disappeared from sight.

In the cold and dark of 6 p.m., with only four resolute hunters left in the field, Mrs. Scribner called for a van to carry the exhausted mounts home. Most of the wheezing pack was encountered an hour and a half later, some 22 miles from the starting point. The last dog found his own way home two days later and was sent to his kennel for a good rest.

At home, the hunters eased their tired bones with liniment and liquor. Somewhere out near the border of Hunterdon County the fox also rested.

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