Again, Brill was seated at his desk one day engaged with a client in those intimate, cautious, and confidential preliminaries that mark the consummation of a “deal” in real estate. On this occasion the prospective buyer was an Italian: the man sat awkwardly and nervously in a chair beside Brill’s desk while the great man bent his huge weight ponderously and persuasively toward him. From time to time the Italian’s voice, sullen, cautious, disparaging, interrupted Brill’s ponderous and coaxing drone. The Italian sat stiffly, his thick, clumsy body awkwardly clad in his “good” clothes of heavy black, his thick, hairy, blunt-nailed hands cupped nervously upon his knees, his black eyes glittering with suspicion under his knitted inch of brow. At length, he shifted nervously, rubbed his paws tentatively across his knees and then, with a smile mixed of ingratiation and mistrust, said: “How mucha you want, eh?”
“How mucha we want?” Brill repeated vulgarly as the burble began to play about within his throat. “Why, how mucha you got?… You know we’ll take every damn thing you got! It’s not how mucha we want, it’s how mucha you got!” And he hurled himself backward, bellowing with laughter. “By God, Reverend,” he yelled as Uncle Bascom entered, “ain’t that right? It’s not how mucha we want, it’s how mucha you got!’od damn! We ought to take that as our motter. I’ve got a good mind to git it printed on our letterheads. What do you think, Reverend?”
“Hey?” howled Uncle Bascom absently, as he prepared to enter his own office.
“I say we ought to use it for our motter.”
“Your what?” said Uncle Bascom scornfully, pausing as if he did not understand.
“Our motter,” Brill said.
“Not your motter,” Bascom howled derisively. “The word is not motter,” he said contemptuously. “Nobody of any refinement would say motter. Motter is not correct!” he howled finally. “Only an ig-no-ram-us would say motter. No!” he yelled with final conclusiveness. “That is not the way to pronounce it! That is ab-so-lute-ly and em-phat-ic-ally not the way to pronounce it!”
“All right, then, Reverend,” said Brill, submissively. “You’re the doctor. What is the word?”
“The word is motto,” Uncle Bascom snarled. “Of course! Any fool knows that!”
