Kipen's article does not address the theory put forth by Philip Fanning in _Mark Twain and Orion Clemens_ (Univ. of Alabama Press, 2003) in his chapter 10 titled "Sam's San Francisco Crisis." Fanning's research and reasoning places the "suicide thought" on or about January 18, 1866 and relates it to frustrations caused by Orion and failure to sell the Tennessee land. Barb