Life at a life-saving station is never an idle one. The routine followed at the Avalon, New Jersey station, as I have observed it, in essential details, is the same as that practiced at all of the stations of the service. Four days of every week are devoted to drill. On Tuesdays the keeper orders out the surfboat and drills the crew in riding breakers and landing through heavy surf. On Wednesday he gives the men practical instruction in the working of the international signal code. On Thursday the Lyle gun is ordered out, and one of the crew, taking up a position some distance down the shore near a post stuck in the sand, personates a seaman on a stranded vessel. The other members of the crew plant the gun and fire a line which the watcher pulls in and rigs to the post. Then the men at the other end of the line dispatch the breeches-buoy and gallantly effect the rescue of their comrade. On Friday the recovery drill is carefully gone through. One of the crew assumes the role of a half-drowned sailor, and his comrades resuscitate him by rolling him on the sand and producing artificial breathing, according to the rules laid down for the purpose. Saturday is general cleaning day. The discipline of the crew is never relaxed and none of its members can go out of sight of the station save by special permission or when off duty. The night hours at a life-saving station afford a much more thrilling story than the one I have just been relating. Each crew is divided into three night watches. The first watch goes on duty at sundown and patrols the beach until eight o'clock, at which hour the second watch relieves it and patrols until midnight, when the third watch sallies out and does duty until four o'clock in the morning. Then the first watch again goes on patrol and keeps watch until sunrise. During the day a surfman is constantly on the lookout in the watch-tower of the station. If the weather be clear, this precaution suffices, but if it is cloudy and storms threaten, the beach patrols are continued through the day. Each watch consists of two men, who, upon leaving the station, separate and follow their beats to the right and left until they meet the patrolmen from the neighboring stations on either side, with whom they exchange checks--this to show the keeper they have covered their respective beats. On the Atlantic seaboard, stations are now within an average distance of five miles of each other, but often the beats of the surfmen are six and seven miles long. It is a part of the surfman's duties to keep a constant watch of the sea and to note the vessels by the lights displayed, and, if they approach too close to the shore or outlying sandbars, give them timely warning. For this purpose he always carries a Coston signal, which, when exploded by percussion, emits a red flame that flashes far out over the water and warns the unwary ship of its peril. Last year more than two hundred vessels, warned in this way, at