Have you ever been very sick for a while? Hospitalized, perhaps? If not, try to imagine it. Especially if you were a hard working, energetic person like Mr. Franklin. He was doing well through hard work, then found himself and his employer so sick that he was near to dying. Nobody wants that, but once he was sick he was able to relax, stay in bed and get taken care of. So when he found himself better he faced the prospect of having to work hard all over again to regain the position he had already held. Imagine what that would be like. Could you see how, on one level, getting better could actually seem (ironically) worse than staying sick or even dying?

In a book about the rightness of hard work and self-sacrifice we get a glimpse here of how hard it was for Franklin himself to keep at it. Do you identify more or less with Franklin for having made this admission? Have you ever felt this way or known anyone who felt this way? Is it a sensible thing to think? Are even those who hold good sense in the highest regard always sensible themselves? Do you think it was the lingering illness that made him feel that way or just plain humanity?