Once he took out his snuff-box, and, after taking a pinch of snuff, and returning the box to his pocket, he illustrated a point which he was making by an anecdote: "While I was abroad," said he, "laboring to arrange the terms of the Treaty of Ghent, there appeared a report of the negotiations, or letters relative thereto; and several quotations from my remarks or letters, touching certain stipulations in the treaty, reached Kentucky, and were read by my constituents. "Among them, was an odd old fellow, who went by the nickname of '_Old Sandusky_,' and he was reading one of these letters, one evening, at a near resort, to a small collection of the neighbors. As he read on, he came across the sentence, 'This must be deemed a _sine qua non_." "'What's a _sine qua non_?' said a half-dozen by-standers. "'Old Sandusky' was a little bothered at first, but his good sense and natural shrewdness was fully equal to a 'mastery of the Latin.' "'_Sine--qua--non?_' said 'Old Sandusky,' repeating the question very slowly; 'why, _Sine Qua Non_ is three islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, and Harry Clay is the last man to give them up! 'No _Sine Qua Non_, no treaty,' he says; and he'll stick to it!'" You should have seen the laughing eye, the change in the speaker's voice and manner, said the narrator, to understand the electric effect the story had upon the audience. Previous to Mr. Clay's entrance upon public life in the service of his country, and while he was yet young in the practice of the law, in Kentucky, the following striking incident is related of him: Two Germans, father and son, were indicted for murder, and were tried for the crime. Mr. Clay was employed to defend them. The act of killing was proved by evidence so clear and strong, that it was considered not only a case of murder, but an exceedingly aggravated one. The trial lasted five days, at the close of which he addressed the jury in the most impassioned and eloquent manner; and they were so moved by his pathetic appeals, that they rendered a verdict of manslaughter only. After another hard day's struggle, he succeeded in obtaining an arrest of judgment, by which his clients, in whose case he thought there was an absence of all "malice prepense," were set at liberty. They expressed their gratitude in the warmest terms to their deliverer, in which they were joined by an old and ill-favored female, the wife of one and the mother of the other, who adopted a different mode, however, of tendering _her_ thanks, which was by throwing her arms round Mr. Clay's neck, and repeatedly kissing him, in the presence of a crowded court-room! Mr. Clay respected her feelings too much to repulse her; but he was often afterward heard to say, that it was "the longest and strongest embrace he ever encountered in his professional practice!"