There is no time which a jury may consider reasonable or otherwise for the other party to consider it, except by the agreement or concession of the party making it.
— from Putnam's Handy Law Book for the Layman by Albert Sidney Bolles

These were doubtless a class of acts which the theory of Roman jurisprudence treated merely as wrongs; but the growing sense of the majesty of society revolted from their entailing nothing worse on their perpetrator than the payment of money damages, and accordingly the injured person seems to have been permitted, if he pleased, to pursue them as crimes extra ordinem , that is by a mode of redress departing in some respect or other from the ordinary procedure.
— from Ancient Law: Its Connection to the History of Early Society by Maine, Henry Sumner, Sir