Of himself he said that "he was in this world like the E string of a violin on a contrabass."
"Chopin: The Man and His Music"
James Huneker
The band, laboriously trained for years by the local jeweler-said to be able to blow a candle through an inch board with his South Bend B flat cornet-now formed in marching order, the grimed fireman gamely in place even after a night run, with his silver contrabass.
"Laramie Holds the Range"
Frank H. Spearman
Reading him somehow suggests hearing a Bach mass rescored for two fifes, a tambourine in B, a wind machine, two tenor harps, a contrabass oboe, two banjos, eight tubas and the usual clergy and strings.
"A Book of Prefaces"
H. L. Mencken