There is nothing harder on a woman than moving. For a man, it means signing a lease or something of that kind and perhaps hiring an expressman. But a woman has to see that her china is packed so that it won't break, see that her clothes are all properly packed in trunks, see that a thousand and one things are accommodated in boxes, see that everything is properly disposed of at the destination, see that closets and floors and woodwork and corners are cleaned. There isn't any fun in it at all for her. Naturally, she cannot regard it as much of a celebration.
For example, Sam Houston—moving never bothered him. At 13, he moved to Tennessee from Virginia where he was born in 1793. As a lad he spent much of his time with the Cherokee Indians. At 20, he began moving on his own account. He joined the Army and served in the War of 1812. At the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, serving as an ensign, he was shot in the thigh with a barbed arrow. He ordered a soldier to pull it out, but the man couldn't, so he drew his pistol and threatened: "If you don't pull it out, I'll shoot you." When it was out he rushed back into the fray.
At 25, he resigned from the Army, studied law for six months, was admitted to the bar. Soon he moved to Washington as a Congressman. At 33, he was elected Governor of Tennessee. Two years later, married, but soon after, his wife left him. He resigned and went to Arkansas to live with the Cherokees; there he married a half-breed. In 1832, President Jackson sent him on a mission to the Indians of Teras. Jackson remarked: "Thank God, there is one man at least in Texas who was made by the Almighty and not by a tailor." Indeed, Houston looked it: 6 ft. 3 in. in moccasins, straight as an arrow, with deep, flashing eyes, high forehead, dressed like a frontiersman in leggings, hunting shirt and coonskin cap.
He was not a man to worry about moving. Texas was on the point of revolution. He attended the Convention of San Felipe in 1835 (where he was elected Commander-in-Chief of the Texan Army), and dominated it with his eloquence. Word came that Santa Anna, the Mexican General, had invested the Alamo. In an hour, Sam Houston was leading a force to relieve the fort; but before he could do so it had fallen and its garrison had been massacred. But he met the Mexican Army at San Jacinto, routed it and took Santa Anna prisoner. Before the captive, Houston took a gnawed ear of corn from his pocket, saying: "Sir, do you ever expect to conquer men who fight for freedom, when their General can march four days with one ear of corn for his rations?"
"Old Sam Jacinto," as they called him, advanced from Commander-in-Chief of the Texas army to President of the Republic of Texas. After Texas was admitted to the Union, in 1845, he was sent to Washington as Senator. There he went, moving once more, but going with his tiger- skin vest, his shoulder blanket and his sombrero. He would sit in the Senate all day whittling sticks, occasionally rising to deliver an oration. In his bedroom at the hotel, he hung signs saying, "My bedtime is nine o'clock."
He married a third time and had eight children, four sons and four daughters.