Speaking of the cholera in the Middlesex Hospital, she said, "The prostitutes come in perpetually — poor creatures staggering off their beat! It took worse hold of them than any. One poor girl, loathsomely filthy, came in, and was dead in four hours. I held her in my arms and I heard her saying something. I bent down to hear. 'Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time.' I said, ''''Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was, or can ever imagine.''''"

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Speaking of the cholera in the Middlesex Hospital, she said, "The prostitutes come in perpetually — poor creatures staggering off their beat! It took worse hold of them than any. One poor girl, loathsomely filthy, came in, and was dead in four hours. I held her in my arms and I heard her saying something. I bent down to hear. 'Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time.' I said, ''''Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was, or can ever imagine.''''"" in the context of "Elizabeth Gaskell, quoting Florence Nightingale, in letter 217 (17 October 1854), in The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell (1966; 1997), p. 318" to mean that wisdom is timeless.