253.—NASAL.
A peculiarity about the singing of French artists is a tendency toward a nasal quality of tone. This probably owes its origin to the language and, perhaps, somewhat to the French school of singing. So whenever Frenchmen condemn a singer for using a nasal quality we may be sure the peculiarity was quite pronounced. Such was the case with a singer of the last century named Larivee who sinned so much in this nasal respect that when he appeared he was frequently greeted with the remark, "That nose has really a fine voice."
How many noses we may listen to in the average congregation that can hardly be said to have good voices; or, perchance, we might put it, how many voices which have defective noses.