Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
- Date
- 1894
- Local voice
- Epigraph / fictional source voice · Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
Meaning of “Let us endeavor so to live that when…”
The undertaker supplies the comic reversal, but the underlying standard is serious: live with enough decency and human value that even someone professionally accustomed to death would feel the loss.
Where does it come from?
Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter VI epigraph; a Calendar maxim preceding the chapter.
Why the local voice matters
Twain presents this wording as a chapter-epigraph Calendar maxim. The Calendar is a fictional framing device / source voice rather than uncomplicated autobiography by Twain.
