The President of the United States was speaking. His audience comprised two thousand foreign-born men who had just been admitted to citizenship. They listened intently, their faces, aglow with the light of a newborn patriotism, upturned to the calm, intellectual face of the 5 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:

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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 20 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.

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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 5 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 10 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 15 it, looking out over leagues of space to a snow-swept village that huddled on an island in the Beresina, the swiftflowing tributary of the mighty Dnieper, an island that looked like a black bone stuck tight in the maw of the stream.

20 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 25 swept up the Beresina, trailing wondrous draperies of vivid green. Her feet touched the snow-hardened ground, and armies of little white and blue flowers sprang up in her footsteps. Soft breezes escorted her, velvety breezes that carried the aromas of the far-off places from which 30 they came-places far to the southward, like Kremenchug and Kerch, and more distant towns beyond the Black Sea whose people were not under the sway of the Great Czar.

"The little breezes are hot and sweet," he said, sniffing hungrily, with his face turned toward the south. "I know them, Ivan! I know them! They have the spice odor that I sniffed on the winds that came to us when we lay in the trenches at Balaklava. Praise God for the 10 warmth !"

And that day the Dream came to Big Ivan as he plowed. It was a wonder dream. It sprang into his brain as he walked behind the plow, and for a few minutes he quivered as the big bridge quivers when the Beresina 15 sends her ice squadrons to hammer the arches. It made his heart pound mightily, and his lips and throat became very dry.

Big Ivan stopped at the end of the furrow and tried to discover what had brought the Dream. Where had it 20 come from? Why had it clutched him so suddenly? Was he the only man in the village to whom it had come?

Like his father, he sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his great hands into the sunbeams. He 25 reached down and plucked one of a bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came from them, and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and strong. He knew! It 30 couldn't come to his father, or Donkov the tailor, or Poborino the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan's Dream was one that called for youth and strength.

Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words "To America," and then a sudden 25 fear sprang upon him as those words dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village street. Was he mad? America was eight thousand versts away! It was far across the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew no one. He wondered in 30 the strange little silence that followed his words if the crippled son of Poborino the smith had heard him. The cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to his ear.