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Goodwin Atkins Stone.
Second Lieutenant 2d Mass. Cavalry, November 13, 1862; first Lieutenant, April 14, 1863; Captain, March 25, 1864; died at Falls Church, Va., July 18, 1864, of a wound received at Aldie, July 6.Goodwin Atkins Stone was born in Newburyport, July 12, 1841, the son of Jacob and Eliza (Atkins) Stone. His characteristics in early childhood were marked. A picture of him at four years of age shows a sweet grace and dignity about him, as well as much beauty. He had a quick, inquiring mind, with a reflective turn, and a very sensitive conscience. He was an affectionate child, with a remarkable love of nature, which developed rapidly as he grew into boyhood. When about nine or ten years old, he studied at home with me for some time, and I remember well his eager fresh delight in physical geography, as we studied it from Mrs. Somerville and Guyot. I remember that he understood and delighted in the generalizations and analogies of Guyot. He enjoyed botany very much also, especially the structural part of it; and we took many long rambles, often in the early morning, for every flower in its season. He alludes to these pleasant walks in a letter written from Virginia in the spring of 1863, when he mentions ‘a lovely morning, just like the mornings years ago, when we set off for columbines or hepaticas,—the sky like a pearl, robins singing, and pine-trees murmuring,—everything quiet and peaceful in the scene, except the ranks of troopers and clanking of sabres.’ Harriet Prescott, who was often our companion in these walks, used then to quote the lines from Matthew Roydon's Astrophill as describing Goodwin's face exactly:—
‘A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,—
The lineaments of Gospel books.’
