The chapter's opening provides precise geographical corroboration, consistent with the document "The Russian Sources":
"The town of Lyady, where I was born and spent all the days of my youth, stands on the frontier between Mogilev Governorate and Smolensk Governorate. It itself belongs… to the Pale of Settlement, but beyond the bridge eastward, over the river 'Mereya', begins 'the land of the nations', 'outside the Pale'." AZR, "Lyady", "Memoir Chapters"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
He describes a shabby town, mud "up to the knees", old wooden houses, whose one "adornment" was the great synagogue (the "shtibl") with a bimah painted with lions and leopards, and bookcases reaching to the ceiling. The economy depended on the peasants of the neighboring villages.
AZR describes the world of Chabad: the Rebbe R. Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, the "Tzemach Tzedek" of Lubavitch (died 5626/1866; Lyady is about 30 km away), his multitude of Hasidim and his writings. After his death, his sons dispersed to serve as rabbis in various towns — "R. Shneur Zalman to Lyady". The arrival of R. Shneur Zalman in the town was a formative event of AZR's childhood.
"When the people of Lyady learned that R. Shneur Zalman was traveling to come and take up honored residence in their town, all the townspeople hurried out to greet him (this was in the month of Av, 5628) — and among them I too, the boy of fourteen." AZR, "Among Hasidim", "Memoir Chapters"; Project Ben-Yehuda.
The calculation: Av 5628 = summer 1868. If AZR was then "a boy of fourteen", his year of birth ≈ 1854. Independent corroboration, from a primary source, of the year of birth that appears in all the sources (24 Shevat 5614/1854).
His description of the welcome is among the most stirring in his writing: "Whoever did not see our joy then never saw joy in his life!" — the sun shone "with an entirely different light", "and when the carriage reached the town, the Hasidim unharnessed the horses and pulled it themselves until they reached the inn".
AZR immortalizes the Chabad ethos of joy through the jokes of the wagon-driver and the Hasidim on the way to the Rebbe:
"If man's origin were gold and his end dust, then he would have to weep; but since his origin is dust and his end is dust, and in between one hears words of Hasidism and sips a little drink — what, then, is there to weep about? What have you lost, son of man?" Ibid. (the words of a Hasid in the wagon). "The Hasidim do not love sadness."
He also describes R. Shneur Zalman's conduct, his stature, his seclusion, the three sermons on the Sabbath, and the melodies "in which there is an outpouring of the soul… that leads to ecstasy".
An important family detail: at the Rebbe's table in Lyady a second chair was set for AZR's uncle:
"In the first days after his arrival in Lyady they would set a second chair for my uncle R. Yitzhak… who was a great Talmudist: he was indeed a 'Misnaged', but he paid honor to the Rebbe, and would go every Sabbath to hear his sermon… The princes of the revealed Torah and of the hidden Torah made a covenant of peace between them." Ibid.
This detail illustrates that AZR's home stood on the seam line between Chabad Hasidism and the Misnagdim — his uncle a "Misnaged" Torah scholar who honored the Rebbe. This environment shaped the child who would one day become a writer who produced both "Shon Hasidim" (a Hasidic anthology) and social criticism.