I do not thirst for myself, but for my whole army.'
Yet there have been thirsty lips that have made a still more trying
renunciation. Our own Sir Philip Sidney, riding back, with the mortal
hurt in his broken thigh, from the fight at Zutphen, and giving the
draught from his own lips to the dying man whose necessities were
greater than his own, has long been our proverb for the giver of that
self-denying cup of water that shall by no means lose its reward.
A tradition of an act of somewhat the same character survived in a
Slesvig family, now extinct. It was during the wars that ranged from
1652 to 1660, between Frederick III of Denmark and Charles Gustavus of
Sweden, that, after a battle, in which the victory had remained with the
Danes, a stout burgher of Flensborg was about to refresh himself, ere
retiring to have his wounds dressed, with a draught of beer from a
wooden bottle, when an imploring cry from a wounded Swede, lying on the
field, made him turn, and, with the very words of Sidney, 'Thy need is
greater than mine,' he knelt down by the fallen enemy, to pour the
liquor into his mouth.
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