n men who had just been admitted to citizenship.
They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a new-born
patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the first citizen
of the country they now claimed as their own.

Here and there among the newly made citizens were wives and children.
The women were proud of their men. They looked at them from time to
time, their faces showing pride and awe.

One little woman, sitting immediately in front of the President, held
the hand of a big, muscular man and stroked it softly. The big man was
looking at the speaker with great blue eyes that were the eyes of a
dreamer.

The President's words came clear and distinct:

_You were drawn across the ocean by some beckoning finger of hope,
by some belief, by some vision of a new kind of justice, by some
expectation of a better kind of life. You dreamed dreams of this
country, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. A man enriches
the country to which he brings dreams, and you who have brought them
have enriched America._

The big man made a curious choking noise and his wife breathed a soft
"Hush!" The giant was strangely affected.

The President continued:

_No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us, but remember this,
if we have grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with
you. A man does not go out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man
does not hope for the thing that he does not believe in, and if some
of us have forgotten what America believed in, you at any rate imported
in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. Each of you, I am sure,
brought a dream, a glorious, shining dream, a dream worth more than
gold or silver, and that is the reason that I, for one, make you
welcome._

The big man's eyes were fixed. His wife shook him gently, but he did
not heed her. He was looking through the presidential rostrum, through
the big buildings behind it, looking out over leagues of space to a
snow-swept village that huddled on an island in the Beresina, the
swift-flowing tributary of the mighty Dnieper, an island that looked
like a black bone stuck tight in the maw of the stream.

It was in the little village on the Beresina that the Dream came to
Ivan Berloff, Big Ivan of the Bridge.

The Dream came in the spring. All great dreams come in the spring,
and the Spring Maiden who brought Big Ivan's Dream was more than
ordinarily beautiful. She swept up the Beresina, trailing w