but the letter which Acastus has just brought has made them look up a little. Rufus is here very brisk and cheerful. Fie wanted to hear something of my composition, but I told him that my books were dumb in your absence." It is pleasant to read of the master's concern when his postman arrives with only a message from Tiro who is too weak to put pen to paper, and to learn from a postscript that a second carrier has come while Cicero is writing, and that the invalid has summoned up strength to scrawl a few lines nevertheless, "with the letters all tottering";[1] and that Cicero is sending a nurse and a cook to aid in his convalescence.
Tiro had, during his master's lifetime, formed a plan of making a collection of his letters. Cicero jokes with him about it, and says that he believes Tiro wants to have his own included in the collection.[2] He seems, however, seriously to have approved the notion, for in the year before his death he writes to Atticus:[3] "There is no collection of my letters, but Tiro has about seventy, besides a few still to come from you. Before they are published, I must read them through and correct them." We may be thankful indeed that this plan was never carried out. Tiro, notwithstanding his feeble health, lived to a good old age, and devoted the rest of his life to the pious task of collecting and publishing the works of his beloved master and friend. Instead of the seventy and odd letters, carefully edited
