The pleasing instructor: or, entertaining moralist. Consisting of select essays, relations, visions, and allegories, collected from the most eminent English authors. To which are prefixed, New thoughts on education. Designed for the use of schools, as well as the closet; with a view to form the rising mind [sic] of the youth of both sexes to virtue, and destroy in the bud, those vices and frailties, which mankind, and youth in particular, are addicted to. The sixth edition, enlarged and improved.
The Pleasing Instructor, edited by Ann Fisher and initially published in Newcastle by Thomas Slack, her husband, first brought out the “Preliminary address prefixed to the Pennsylvania almanac for 1758: on oeconomy and frugality” in its third edition of 1760; and that form of the text under that title appeared about thirty times up through 1815. Franklin’s name was never associated with it. The subtitle “on oeconomy and frugality” indicates the message that the youthful reader was to take away from the text. Although The Way to Wealth has been associated with the “American Dream” of being able to rise in the world through one’s own efforts, in this widely disseminated form, it is closely followed by another text “On the justice of providence in the distribution of riches.”