Fletcher passed the early part of his life at Nyon, where he began his education. With his two brothers, he was then removed to the university of Geneva, where he was distinguished equally by his superior abilities and his uncommon diligence. The two first prizes for which he stood a candidate he carried away from a number of competitors, several of whom were nearly related to the professors. He allowed himself but little time either for recreation, refreshment, or sleep. After confining himself closely to his studies all day, he would frequently consume the greater part of the night in making notes of what he had found in the course of his reading worthy of observation. After quitting Geneva, he was sent by his father to Lentzburg, in the canton of Berne, where, besides pursuing his other studies, he acquired the German language. On his return to Nyon, he studied Hebrew, and improved his knowledge of mathematics. From early childhood, Fletcher loved and served his Maker. He himself relates: “I think it was when I was seven years of age, that I first began to feel the love of God shed abroad in my heart, and that I resolved to give myself up to Him, and to the service of His Church, if ever I should be fit for it; but the corruption which is in the world, and that which was in my own heart, soon weakened, if not erased, those first characters which grace had written upon it.” “From a child thou hast known the holy Scriptures,” wrote St. Paul to Timothy. The same might have been said to Fletcher. His early acquaintance with inspired truth guarded him, on the one hand, from the snares of infidelity, and preserved him, on the other, from many of the vices peculiar to youth. It also qualified and emboldened him to reprove sin, and, with becoming modesty, to remonstrate with sinners. To illustrate this, his biographers relate an incident which occurred when he was only fourteen years of age. A lady and her three sons visited his sister, Madame de Botens. The sons quarrelled, and the mother uttered a hasty imprecation. Young Fletcher was shocked, and, instantly starting from his chair, began to expound and enforce the apostolic admonition, “Provoke not your children to wrath,” etc.; and then reminded his astonished auditress that her imprecation might be realized; a vaticination that soon became a fact; for, on the same day, the lady embarked upon the lake, was overtaken with a tremendous storm, and was brought to the point of perishing; and, soon after, two of her sons were drowned; and the third was crushed to death at one of the gates of Geneva.