curtain lecture

Her grandmother treated him to what were referred to as “curtain lectures.”

She seemed to me to be more forward than ever that morning, and I felt a suspicion that I was going to get a curtain lecture.

Mrs. Caudle herself would scarcely hazard a curtain lecture with this atrocious alternative in prospect.

Her discourse would have rendered the poor man very uneasy, indeed, had not "luck" extricated him from his dilemma on the next day succeeding the curtain lecture.

Many were the curtain lectures which were inflicted upon the poor barber.