A tiny tease about a man so greedy he bites bits from plates and gobbles the dates off a calendar. The pun on "dates" is the whole joke, and it lands well read with a straight face before the punchline breaks it.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
The greedy man is he who sits
And bites bits out of plates,
Or else takes up an almanac
And gobbles all the dates.
About this rhyme
A short, sharp tease about table manners, or the lack of them: the greedy man bites bits out of plates and gobbles every date in the almanac. It's a pun, since an almanac's dates are the calendar kind and not the fruit, and the joke lands better once a child spots it. Good for a growly, exaggerated voice on the word gobbles.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition