"Mlle. Siismund Potoski [sic], best known to us as Ernestine L. Rose, was born in Poland and belonged to a Jewish family. She was sincere in her faith and conscientious in the observance of all its ceremonies. She was a faithful student of the Scriptures and of the ritual and dogmas of her faith until the persecutions of the Jews in Poland and Russia led her to investigate the theologies of both Jews and Christians and to reject alike their creeds and ceremonies. This involved much suffering all her life persecuted by Christians as well as those of her own faith. She was a liberal alike in religion and government and sympathized with France in her struggle for a Republic and rejoiced in its establishment in the United States. Traveling extensively on the continent, by her eloquent appeals to those in authority she relieved many cases of injustice and oppression, bringing peace and happiness to many an humble home...During the years of 1855 to 1860 Mrs. Rose traveled with Miss Anthony all over the State of New York, speaking to large audiences in fifty different counties. The result of their united labors was the passage of a bill securing to married women the right to their ways and guardianship of their children. For half a century, as a public speaker, her eloquent voice was heard on both continents, she having taken an active part in all the great progressive movements of our day, associated with the most influential classes of reformers in both Europe and America. All through those eventual years, Mrs. Rose fought a double battle, not only for the political rights of her sex, but for their religious rights as individual souls, to do their own thinking and believing, How much of the freedom we now enjoy may be due to this noble Polish woman cannot be estimated, for moral influences are too subtle for measurement. They who sat with her in bygone days on the platform will remember her matchless powers as a speaker, and how safe we all felt when she had the floor that neither in manner, sentiment, argument, nor repartee would she in any way compromise the dignity of the occasion. She had the advantage of rare grace and beauty, which in a measure heightened the effect of all she said. She had a rich musical voice and a ready flow of choice language. In style she was clear, logical, and at times impassioned. I visited her during her last sad days in London, after the death of her husband, when she was stricken with the disease that terminated her life. She talked with deep feeling of her eventful life and with a lively interest in what was still passing, familiar as she was with every step of progress in our movement, both in England and America. "I am happy," she said at parting, "that I have helped to usher in the dawn of a new day for woman..." Of death and the future life she said nothing. I had often heard her say in former days that of the future [life after death] she knew nothing, and seldom thought of that subject, as she had always found enough in this life to occupy her time and thoughts. She had no fears of death and passed away calmly, sustained in her last days by the same philosophy that inspired her noble, unselfish life."