Life sets before you, dear reader, complex and sometimes difficult tasks. It’s good if you have a father and mother, kind and smart friends, they will help and advise. But what if there is no father, or mother, or even neither mother nor father, and instead of friends, unkind people turn out to be advisers?.. It is difficult at seventeen years old to stand on the captain’s bridge of your own ship, to go around underwater reefs, but it is necessary. Life requires this. Even if you have a father, a mother, and friends, you still need to think for yourself. No one will decide for you who to choose as your comrades, what roads to take, what profession to master. And if you are smart, if you seek the friendship of true comrades, you will not be lost! People are kind, and they need you, a good, strong, hard-working person, like a real working person should be. B&W drawings by R. Volsky. Note: there is a dedicatory inscription on the facing page, otherwise the book is in good condition.