Show COLBY'S WORDS Chauffeur Is Stoker 0 of Fires Forges The word ord chauffeur has two sanctioned pronunciations The French pronunciation which Is not widely used in America is But Americans generally generally generally gener gener- ally prefer to accent the first syllable thus SHO The literal French meaning of chauffeur is a stoker he who maintains the fire of a forge or of a steam engine Automobile drivers were called chauffeurs for the reason that the first horseless carriages originally developed in France were steam propelled In 1770 a French inventor Nicholas built a three three- wheeled road wagon powered by a crude crudo steam engine The top speed of the vehicle was two and a half miles an hour and states the Encyclopedia Britannica it had to stop every hundred feet or so to make steam Obviously the chauffeur was appropriately named In America many of the early cars were steam driven and all were so expensively and explosively explosively explosively unpredictable that it was teas the custom to employ drivers to tinker with operate and maintaIn maintain main- main taIn fain the costly p playthings I a y t hi n g s. s Chauffeur together with other French terms such as chassis cabriolet t limousine coupe armature was borrowed as a n designation for these daredevil daredevil dare dare- devil drivers Note In the south where chauffeurs are almost always i Negroes and serve as combination combination tion houseboys yardmen and drivers they are spoken of as boy The southerner rarely uses the term chauffeur In Instead Instead In- In stead he will wilI say Ill have my boy come by and pick you up This is confusing to h- h erners for the southerner also refers to his son as my my boy But by some seventh sense of their own southerners always seem to know which boy is beIng being being be be- ing referred to |