There were frequent suicides, with the despondent leaping down the well of the hotel's lacey wrought iron staircase.
The trolley car at its stop — there had been no traffic circle then — would unfold a step with a harsh clack and David, leaping down, jarred the sour dread in his belly at not having mastered his lesson.
Leaping down to the stage barrier, flapping his sweaty fringe at the front rows and flicking his microphone lead like a man in a state of agitation over a tangled Hoover cord, he throws himself into the occasion with glorious abandon.
"At the Mercy" uses its harmonies to seesaw between uncertainty and determination; the melody starts by leaping down a tritone, an unusual choice, and the chords keep turning minor and diminished while the lyrics confess, "Sometimes I'd rather run and hide/ Than stay and face the fear inside".
Leaping down an alpine waterfall?
Photographed leaping down the Row grinning like a Cheshire Cat, James told Vogue: "A jacket's got to have that bit of lilac showing through the back flap.
