There it was on the bureau, the letter -- in sacred ink, on blessed paper [1] — all over the city，people, if they listened, could hear the beating of George O'Kelly's heart. He read the commas[2], the blots, and the thumb -- smudge[3] on the margin — then [4] he threw himself hopelessly upon his bed.
He was in a mess, one of those terrific messes which are ordinary incidents in the life of the poor, which follow poverty [5] like birds of prey [6]. The poor go under or go up or go wrong or even go on，somehow, in a way the poor have [7] — but George O'Kelly was so new to poverty that had any one denied the uniqueness of his case he would have been astounded [8].
Less than two years ago he had been graduated with honors [9] from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology [10] and had taken a position with a firm [11] of construction engineers in southern Tennessee [12]. All his life he had thought in terms of tunnels and skyscrapers and great squat dams and tall, three-towered bridges， that were like dancers holding hands in a row, with heads as tall as cities and skirts of cable strand. It had seemed romantic to George O'Kelly to change the sweep of rivers and the shape of mountains so that life could flourish in the old bad lands of the world where it had never taken root before.

背景介绍
本篇节选自斯科特▪菲茨吉拉德 Scott Fitzgerald (1896〜1940)的《要实际ー些》（The Sensible Thing）。他是两次世界大战期间的主要美国作家之一，善于刻画 20年代繁荣之极而又危机四伏的美国社会，被称为“爵士乐时代的桂冠作家”，其代表作为《了不起的盖茨比》(The Great Gatsby , 1925 )

难点解析
1. In sacred ink, on blessed paper: paper 与 ink相呼应，此处特指信纸。翻译时， 需考虑汉语习惯，添加“写信的(墨水）”和“用的（信笺)”。