What I want now is a sort of safety-ring to string 'em on and keep 'em safe; for I haven't a good memory, and I get mighty rattled sometimes.

Thoughts like these are like the secret of a combination lock; they let you into the place where the gold and securities and title-deeds of life are.
Trouble is, I haven't got a safety-ring, and I'm certain to lose them.

I haven't got what you'd call an intellectual memory.

Things come in flashes to me out of experiences, and pull me up short, and I say, "Yes, that's it--that's it; I understand." I see why it's so, and what it means, and where it leads, and how far it spreads.
It's five thousand years old.

Adam thought it after Cain killed Abel, or Abel thought it just before he died, or Eve learned it from Lilith, or it struck Abraham when he went to sacrifice Isaac.
Sometimes things hit me deep like that here in the desert.