I think the correct answer is the last one "before starting college, jake learned how to speak spanish and travelled across south"
The three allusions Ralph Waldo Emerson makes are Francis Bacon, Irish dayworkers, Coeur-de Lions.
In the beginning of the "Society and Solitude" he talks about the capital and mentions how it is the want of animals spirits and in this excerpt appears all these three.
"The capital defect of cold, arid natures is the want of animal spirits. They seem a power incredible, as if God should raise the dead. The recluse witnesses what others perform by their aid, with a kind of fear. It is as much out of his possibility as the prowess of <em>Coeur-de-Lion</em>, or an <em>Irishman's day's-work</em> on the railroad. [...] As <em>Bacon</em> said of manners, “To obtain them, it only needs not to despise them,"
Personification is adding human characteristics to a non-human object. (D. "The landscape listens, shadows - hold their breath.") The landscape listening as if it has ears, and shadows holding their breath are things a living thing would do, so (D) is the best answer.
