Success was an early Twentieth-century magazine initially established to promote something called "New Thought" Philosophy: this was a religious movement whose followers advocated doctrines drawn from accumulated wisdom and philosophy from a variety of origins, including Buddhism, Taoism, and the writings of the ancient Greeks.

How then to explain an article—Hired Girls I Have Met—that ridicules the (alleged) limitations of the typical Irish worker?

Written by one Elspeth MacDonald and published in May of 1907, examples poke fun at servants' language limitations, physical appearance, and a range of domestic errors, misunderstandings, and mishaps. The writer purports to be kind to those in her employ, but her writing is awash in superiority and intolerance (hardly the enlightened principles upon which Success was founded).

One wonders about those hired girls—like this one—who were expected to be at once resilient and invisible, taking orders, following rules, and obliged at all times to swallow their pride. They were told to be thinner, taller, less demanding, more accommodating,  always available, and never in error. When error arose, it was always the servant's fault.

How curious, too, that the name MacDonald has Irish origins.