In John Bunyan's seventeenth century classic, The Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's advancing course suffers a setback when he falls into the Slough of Despond.
The garage mechanic and I both stared at the little auto part that had just fallen to the concrete floor of his shop and broken, cleanly, in two! What had begun as a simple job of putting a new gasket over the part to prevent leakage now became a minor disaster.
