Based on the excerpt, the townspeople of Arkansas are afraid of being seen as gullible.
serious.
dishonest.
uneducated.

By using personification, Frost portrays his own mood.

Explanation:

“Acquainted with the Night” is a poem by Robert Frost. The main theme in the poem is that of isolation. The speaker is walking down the street. He feels lonely, and is dissatisfied. Frost uses personification in the very first line -'I have been one acquainted with the night.' As personification is the attribution of human characteristic to an object which is not human, 'the night' is, in this context, given the human ability to make friends. What the speaker is trying to convey is that he had already experienced darkness and troubles in life - this is something familiar to him. Similarly, the author states that he has 'looked down the saddest city lanes'. In reality, city lanes can be neither happy nor sad. With the use of personification, however, the man demonstrates his own feelings at the moment. He feels lonely, and everything around him seems dark and sad.