I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth… See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
…
You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I’ll show you.
Crawford directly implores Stephen to write for the newspaper and uses the work of Ignatius Gallaher (a character from the Dubliners story “A Little Cloud”) as an exemplar of journalistic excellence. In the middle of Crawford’s explanation of a particular piece Gallaher wrote about the Phoenix Park murders,