Poet Carl Sandburg wrote of a man standing by a road when a wagon pulled up. The driver asked, “What kind of folks live around here?”

The man answered, “What kind of folks was there in the country you come from?”

The driver replied, “Well, they was mostly a lowdown, lying, thieving, gossiping, backbiting lot of people.”

“Well, I guess, stranger, that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here.”

A while later another wagon appeared and the man on the road was asked the same question. But this time the driver said the people where he came from were “mostly a decent, hardworking, law abiding, friendly lot of people.”

“Well…that’s about the kind of folks you’ll find around here” (Harvest Poems, 1910-1960, 1988, p. 98).

It’s common to approach people we don’t know with preconceived ideas and suspicion. We’re actually expressing our own fears. A simple law of happiness is to treat everyone you meet with kindness and courtesy.