No matter how the clown lobby protests, most all ink spills are indubitably the fault of tiny clowns.  From Swarthmore's 1927 yearbook.

With that exclamation point, "Couldn't this be magic" isn't a question.  But Gene Wolfe, in his utterly spectacular Book of the New Sun, notes that "Words are symbols.  [One] chooses to delimit magic as that which does not exist, and so it does not exist.  If you choose to call what we are about to do here magic, then magic lives while we do it."  Possibly related is Maxim Gorky on the divine: "If you believe in Him—He exists.  If you don't—He doesn't" (The Lower Depths).

From Pembroke's 1978 yearbook.  (With a bonus "Believe it if you need it" from American University's 1974 yearbook.)

From Bradley's 1916 yearbook.

From Lustige Blätter, 1901.

From the University of Wisconsin's 1919 yearbook.

The rare cat-headed marotte is a welcome sight.  From Atlantic Christian's 1913 yearbook.

From Shut, 1907.

Pantomimic travelling, 1840.

From Lustige Blätter, 1904.

"Smile stimulator."  From Colorado College's yearbook of 1903.