An excerpt from the book:
“Thus ended the life of one of the greatest men who lived in Jaffna during the nineteenth century. The entry in the Record Book of the family home in Green Hill for 28 May 1884 starts as follows:
Our precious and most dearly beloved brother Samuel died at fifteen minutes past twelve o’clock this afternoon. The day was rainy; the apple blossoms were in their full sheen in the orchards. The trees in their bounteous freshness of their new leafage, and the fields smooth and bright in the luxuriant verdure of their carpeting. The whole landscape seemed animated by the vital forces of the resurrection of spring; all about was peaceful and still. ” (page 126)
Medical Missionaries in Jaffna 
What beautiful language describing a tragic event.
The American Missionaries generally wrote beautiful English. They were all graduates of the top Universities of the day such as Harvard, before they entered the the Theological Seminaries for three years.
Thiru, Time very well spent, wish you all the best. You are magnificiently using your time – more than 50 years after the engineering degree, and particulary after the long spell on the ‘ground water’ in the Jaffna peninsula.