From St. Joseph's 1924 yearbook.

The oracle that spouted nonense, from Krylov's Fables, 1869.

Jonathan Caws-Elwitt shares this bit from a piece called “What Does It Mean?” in which Benchley pokes fun at overanalytical attempts to Aread serious meanings into humorous writing:

"Why monkey around with Nonsense? It can stand well enough on its own feet."

"I once attended a convention of vaudevillians and nightclub performers.... It was nonsense atop nonsense. Though the members constantly referred to Roberts' Rules of Order, they seldom followed or even understood them. If a member got the floor by claiming a point of privilege--whatever that meant--another actor-member, well aware of theatrical billing precedence, would call for special privilege, and another would claim extra special privilege." --Bill Smith, The Vaudevillians

"She said, 'Nonsense.'"  From The Strand, 1908.

The Nonsensibus.

"Nonsensia."  From The Scarlet Letter yearbook (Rutgers, 1918).

"The boy who could talk nonsense."  From The Laughing Prince by Parker Fillmore and illustrated by Jay Van Everen, 1921.

The importance of nonsense, from the Davenport Daily Republican, Feb. 17, 1901.  (Via Yesterday's Print.)

From The Scarlet Letter yearbook (Rutgers, 1915).

"The body is said to have only five senses, but the greatest sense of all is omitted.  Nonsense!"  From The Harvard Lampoon, 1921.

A Defence of Nonsense by G. K. Chesterton, 1911.

From The Scarlet Letter yearbook (Rutgers, 1912).

Talking through his hat.  From Die Bühne, 1925.

Jonathan reports: "In a novel from 1930 [The French Powder Mystery], Ellery Queen (the author and, as it happens, the character) mentions a book on a shelf: Nonsense Anthology, by A. I. Throckmorton. As far as I can tell, this is a fictitious nonsense anthology!"

The context of this still from the spoof mystery series 33 Minute Detective (33分探偵) is that a murder victim typed out his killer's name in his dying moments, but the detective, in order to comedically stretch out an obvious case to fill up the show's half-hour time slot, posits that the keyboard was set to romaji (the Romanized transliteration of Japanese), so that the actual hiragana word was nonsense.

Philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggests that there's a one-of-a-kind sort of nonsense in the magic word abraxas: it is an immobilized "pure thought" and the "highest finality of sense," like a seemingly-nonsensical one-word simile, the paradoxical conclusion of an infinite regression of propositions (a is like b, and b is like c, and c is like d, and so on forever).  "There is only one kind of word which expresses both itself and its sense—precisely the nonsense word: abraxas" (Difference and Repetition [1995]).

Here's some perfect nonsense from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1869.

"Yes—yes—to be sure.  That is to say—nonsense."  From Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1873.