dry-as-dust

He likes them not in any dry-as-dust fashion, but for the light they throw upon the living world of his day.

Dry-as-dust letters and specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out.

I saw them this morning, a couple of dry-as-dust old fossils—city men, I believe, who only think of house property and dividends.

And must practise knowledge on a flesh-and-blood love, not cherish it as a dry-as-dust theory.