Fletcher received his early education at a school in Nyon, and was then sent, with his two brothers, to the Academy, now the University, of Geneva, where he spent seven years in diligent and successful study. On leaving Geneva he spent some time at Lenzburg, chiefly for the sake of learning German. In the scanty records of his youth there is a remarkable succession of perils and hairbreadth escapes. Fletcher was a bold and skilful swimmer, and on at least two occasions his adventurousness nearly cost him his life. Once he swam with a companion to a small, rocky island, about five miles from the shore of the lake. They found it so steep and smooth that they could not land, and it was not until they were completely exhausted by swimming round it that they came upon a place where they could crawl ashore, and whence they were rescued by a passing boat. The other adventure was still more perilous. He was swimming in the Rhine, and was drawn unawares into the mid-stream, where, he says, "the water was extremely rough, and poured along like a galloping horse." After a long and desperate struggle with the current, he was carried into a mill-race, and hurled among the piles on which the mill stood. A blow on the breast made him senseless, and he knew nothing more till he rose on the other side of the mill, after being among the piles for twenty minutes, to find himself five miles from the place where he had started. Another time, when he and his brother were fencing with swords blunted with a kind of button fixed upon the point, the button on his brother's weapon broke, and Fletcher received a desperate thrust in the side that had well-nigh killed him. These incidents have often been referred to as illustrations of the Providence that directed his life; but they reveal in addition elements of character that should not be overlooked. There was nothing effeminate in him. On this point a mistake may be made. It is possible to misinterpret the delicate features, with their rapt expression, the almost excessive modesty, the language fuller charged with emotion than is quite our English wont. But there was strength, not weakness, beneath these often misread indications of character. The natural man in John Fletcher was a soldier and an athlete, and these qualities of manhood remained with him to the end, though turned to higher issues and manifest in other forms than in these early years.