We need not go back to the early writers to find out what is meant by a throaty tone. Fully as many throaty singers are heard nowadays as the old masters ever listened to. What do we mean when we say that a singer's voice is throaty? The answer to this question seems at first sight simple enough: The tones impress us as being formed in the singer's throat. But what conveys this impression? Something in the sound of the tone, of course. Yet even that is not enough. How can a tone, merely a sound to which we listen, tell us anything about the condition of the singer's throat during the production of the tone? Here again the answer seems simple: The listener knows that, in order to produce a tone of like character, he would have to contract his own throat in some way. Here we have a highly significant fact about the voice. On hearing a throaty tone, the listener can tell how this tone is produced; he feels that he would have to contract his own throat in order to produce a similar tone. Let us carry this discussion a little further. How does the listener know this? Certainly not by actually singing a throaty tone. When seated in a concert hall, for example, and listening to a throaty singer, the hearer cannot rise from his seat, sing a few throaty tones himself, and then note how his throat feels. The critic just mentioned did not sing some notes with "pinched glottis" in order to learn how Mme. T---- sang her low tones. Evidently it is not necessary actually to imitate the singer; the hearer gets the same result by imitating the sounds mentally. In other words, when we hear throaty tones we mentally imitate these tones; thus we know that we should have to contract our own throats in order to produce similar tones. But even here we cannot stop. To imitate the singer actually is one thing; mental imitation is something entirely different. In the first case, actual imitation, our muscular sense would inform us of the state of throat tightening. But in the case of mental imitation there is no actual tightening of the throat, nothing, at any rate, comparable to what takes place in actual imitation. There is then a dual function of the imagination; first, the mental imitation of the sound; second, the imaginary tightening of the throat. The analysis of the mental process must therefore be modified, and stated as follows: When we listen to a throaty tone we mentally imitate the tone; an imaginative function of the muscular sense informs us what condition the singer's throat assumes for the production of the tone. A similar operation takes place in listening to nasal voices. An impression is conveyed by a nasal tone, through which the hearer is informed of a condition of tightness or contraction somewhere in the singer's nose.