A missing horseshoe nail can slow a mountain journey to a three-hour foot pace

Evidence

I left the great Manitou at ten yesterday. Birdie, who was loose in the stable, came trotting down the middle of it when she saw me for her sugar and biscuits. No nails could be got, and her shoe was hanging by two, which doomed me to a foot’s pace and the dismal clink of a loose shoe for three hours. — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 176

Categorization

• CANDY: The horseshoe-nail proverb made literal: a shoe hanging by two nails consigns the traveler to three hours of walking and a dismal clink.