I was a sickly child

I spent hours, days and nights, and weeks by myself, entertaining myself. I read through all of my father’s substantial Library, all the philosophers, the novelists, starting in one corner then going all around the room. What a blessing to have those books. History, Art, Understanding. Life elsewhere.

Florence Kelley was one of eight children, six girls and two boys, one set of twins. Five of the children died, including both twins, some as infants, some when they were older. She was the only girl to survive to adulthood, one of her sisters, Anna, living until the age of six before dying when Florence Kelley was 12.
[Source: Florence Kelley as a child. From Sklar, Katherine 'Notes of Sixty Years: The Autobiography of Florence Kelley,' p. 22]