When in 1871, Mr. Kimball was made Chief of the Revenue Marine Bureau of the Treasury Department, the life-saving service had slender existence, save on paper. He found the station-houses sadly neglected and dilapidated, the apparatus rusty or broken, and many of the salaried keepers disabled by age or incompetent and neglectful of their duties. The outlook would have discouraged a man less resolute and determined than the new chief, but he had conceived the splendid idea of guarding the entire coast of the nation with a chain of fortresses garrisoned by disciplined conquerors of the sea, and he set about the accomplishment of his self-imposed task with patience, sagacity and skill. He reorganized the service and prepared a code of regulations for its control, in which the duties of every member were carefully defined. Politics, the bane of the service in former years, was rigidly eliminated. Lazy, careless and incompetent employees were promptly dismissed, and their places filled with capable and faithful surfmen. The station-houses were repaired and increased, and equipped with the best life-saving devices human skill and ingenuity had thus far brought forth. Last and most important of all, a thorough and effective system of inspection and patrol was inaugurated, and so successful did it prove that during the first year's operation of the new system every person imperilled by shipwreck was saved. The service has been wisely extended from year to year, until now it has 270 stations, three-fourths of which are along the Atlantic coast, while others are on the lakes; a board of life-saving appliances; telephone lines for prompt operations and a splendid corps of assistant superintendents, experts, inspectors, station-keepers and mariners. The yearly cost of the service at the present time is slightly less than $1,800,000, a sum ridiculously small when the saving of life and property is taken into consideration.