"South of the Meeting is a lordly manor possessing not one pillared portico but three! Concerning it Chauncey Jerome, the famous clockmaker, wrote under date of 1815 that he 'moved to Farmington and went to work for Captain Selah Porter for twenty dollars a month to build a house for Major Timothy Cowles which was then the best one in town.' The question of 'best' is, like all comparisons, odious but, among all the beautiful houses in the beautiful village, there is still no peer to Major Timothey's story-book mansion. From those porticos one expects to see emerge a bevy of scoop-bonneted maidens in embroidered muslin and India shawls. It is a place for the housing of Chinese porcelains and peacock feather fans; for the drinking of China tea out of Lowestoft cups and sipping Madeira from gossamer glasses brought from the far shores of the Adriatic. Here within a stone's throw of the primitive Hart House is a mansion scarce a century and a half removed from the harsh days of pioneer austerity and, thus contrasted, the two present an unsurpassed example of Connecticut's progress." Pp. 67-68