From Colorado College's 1905 yearbook.

Humpty Dumpty cries over hearing a nonsense song.  Imagine how unbearably miserable, how out of place he must have felt in Wonderland, what a stranger he was in a strange land.  From The Roly-Poly Book by Laura Rountree Smith, 1923.

Today's card tricking oboe who improvises nonsense phrases is from The Martlet, 1974.  (Magicians, especially, will have noticed the extra joke embedded in this: how the oboe has cheated in his card trick.)  That last panel, with the nonsense phrases, touches upon an occult secret that modern stage magicians have now forgotten, to the detriment of their careers.  Nonsense phrases, like the babbled syllables of the Ancient Egyptian wizards, the priestesses of the Delphic oracle, and the stage magicians of old (when "abracadabra" wasn't a cliché) profoundly affect the brain by instilling an altered state of consciousness.  Dr. Raymond Moody recently published his findings on the influence of nonsense and further explained why he has clients read a page of a Dr. Seuss book as preparation for a mind-bending experience within a Psychomanteum (Moody's version of the Necromanteion of Acheron).  Yes, a magician (whether on stage or in an occult setting) who utters hocus pocus gives those present a more extraordinary experience, from within their own brains.  Though the oboe magician in the comic panel cheats at its own card tricks, it knows how to perform genuine magic.  See Magic Words: A Dictionary.

"A bit of nonsense now and then."  From St. Joseph's 1922 yearbook.

"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of men."  From 1907, via Ephemera Obscura.

From A Nonsense Anthology, collected by Carolyn Wells:

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"On a topographical map of Literature Nonsense would be represented by a small and sparsely settled country, neglected by the average tourist, but affording keen delight to the few enlightened travellers who sojourn within its borders."

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De Quincey said, "None but a man of extraordinary talent can write first-rate nonsense."

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From St. Joseph's 1924 yearbook.

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

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

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.

From The Scarlet Letter yearbook (Rutgers, 1912).

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

Here's a "pack of nonsense" from Judy, Or The London Serio-Comic Journal, 1873.

"What nonsense, darling!" — a precursor to the unpublished comic novel Talk Nonsense To Me by Jonathan Caws-Elwitt.  From Thrilling Life Stories for the Masses, 1892.