"The Invalid's Story," sometimes referred to as "The Limburger Cheese Story," was first published as a three-thousand-word addition to "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" in the 1882 Stolen White Elephant volume (Brownell 2). It remained part of the excursion narrative in Merry Tales (1892). In its 1896 collected edition of Mark Twain's works, however, Harper and Brothers separated the two, printing "The Invalid's Story" and "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion" in different volumes. Subsequent editions sustained this separation, reprinting "The Invalid's Story" without indication of its original context. The Neider edition of The Complete Short Stories is based on the thirty-seven volume Stormfield edition.