As a farmer, he always shows great concern for his fields and his animals, and despite all his experience some years bring misfortunes. (yean is an old word meaning to give birth)
April 2nd 1809 Easter-day upon its revolutionary axel is again returned, and finds me Man. – yet I am going the way of my Fathers and my place e’re long, shall know me no more: –
At the present am much busyed amongst my flocks, and my Ewes yean their lambs unfortunately; a person this morning told me I had ill luck; I replyed I did not like the term. – he asking me to explain, I said, I considered it to be chance; the same events might befall Thos Clegg, David Dixon, or Matthew Tomlinson without any previous design of Him who causeth the Bull to gender, the Cow to calve, and the Ewe to yean her lamb: was my present misfortunes to come upon me without a physical cause; I perhaps shou’d stagger; but when one Lamb lays double-fold in the whomb, (from its dam frequently bounding over the fences), and another is yeaned upon the shadeless plain, unshelter’d from the pinching blast, where lifes dimn taper soon burns out; and another helplessly staggers into the ditch, or injudiciously plunges down the precipice; I am ready to say that it is mere undesigned chance, and so settles the matter.