Thanks, Larry Marshburne!
When we went to the cemetery in Elmira many years ago, we were
surprised to see Olivia's epitaph in German.  I had read a humorous
"translation" of a German story into English that Mark Twain had
written.  As I remember, it kept the German word order and the he, she
and it pronouns all the same way that they are used in German.  Therefore, I
assumed Mark Twain was more amused by German rather than thinking of it
as a language to use for Olivia's epitaph.

Nick Eichler