In America, if a man is a genius he strikes out a new way of cleaning cotton
 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). copy citation

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Author Harriet Beecher Stowe
Source Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands
Topic genius cleaning
Date 1854
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6931/pg6931-images.html

Context

“for, the mountains being the great overpowering fact of life, it follows that all that enterprise and talent which in other places develop themselves in various forms, here take the single channel of climbing mountains. In America, if a man is a genius he strikes out a new way of cleaning cotton; but in Chamouni, if he is a genius he finds a new way of going up Mont Blanc. As a sailor knows every timber, rope, and spar of his ship, and seems to identify his existence with her, so these guides their mountains.” source